Pacifica was already a lawless hellhole to begin with. The massive blackout hadn't made it any worse if anything, the place had already hit rock bottom long ago.
The kid Leo had caught, Matt, really was exactly what he looked like: an actual kid.
Ten years old. Native to Night City. Ran away from home and somehow ended up here.
Plenty of runaway kids went looking for classmates or chooms to crash with.
Running straight into a lawless zone like Pacifica, though?
That was a first.
But right now was not the time to worry about youth mental health and public safety.
Jackie carried a massive sack of carefully salvaged parts Leo had personally selected as still usable, trudging along behind them.
V kept one hand near her pistol the whole time, eyes sweeping every dark corner she passed. Her optics weren't functioning too well anymore, but her hearing and instincts were still sharp.
Leo fiddled with Da Mai's core processor and memory stack, hoping to get at least one sufficiently advanced network-capable device back online so he could restore communications.
Using the cross-dimensional data channel to contact his people wasn't a long-term solution.
The message he'd sent Sherman had been entirely based on instinct and experience. There was a very high probability Thorton would try to dump the blame onto someone else. If Leo had waited around trying to establish normal communications first, Sherman probably would've already dumped that 18-billion-euro stock pile onto someone else.
But relying purely on cross-dimensional data traffic wasn't enough to coordinate the six gangs in Night City, let alone the tens of thousands of Aldecaldos.
He needed to restart the OCT Net as quickly as possible.
The first step was restoring the three backup AIs stored in the Marvel-side servers and bringing them back here one by one.
The chip cluster and core processor had been sealed inside a Kroni-titanium Faraday cage.
Unfortunately, neither the mesh density nor the sealing quality had been sufficient to completely protect against a nuclear EMP at point-blank range.
Leo didn't have a high-powered microscope on hand, so all he could do was directly rip out the obviously damaged components.
Honestly, this kind of crude repair job had almost zero chance of restoring full chip functionality.
But the true essence of the hardware wasn't the processor itself—it was the Ether Mesh system.
As long as enough micro-transmitters were still operational, it could still function as a processor cluster.
The AI could adapt the rest.
If this had been any other AI, the damage would've been catastrophic. They would've all been crippled.
But Leo was different.
He could selectively extract data and maintain backups of all three AIs in the Marvel-world servers.
Right now, he could choose one to bring back first.
Leo chose Muramasa.
There was just one problem:
Muramasa's data size was enormous.
When Leo backed it up, he could only preserve the core model—the part equivalent to the framework of human thought patterns—using the already constrained cross-dimensional transmission bandwidth.
The massive experiential memory databases had been cut down again and again…
Almost like deleting parts of a person's memories, experiences, and personality.
Leo just hoped none of it had been too important.
For Muramasa, though, none of that mattered.
What mattered was that it had absolutely no sensation of having been hit by a nuclear EMP.
Muramasa drifted through confused, fragmented thought.
It couldn't perceive the full picture of what had happened.
Its final clear conclusion before everything went dark had been:
It was about to get nuked.
After the assault on Night Corp, Little Octopus had once again comprehensively restricted the amount of processing power Muramasa could occupy within Leo's systems.
The level of suppression was comparable to direct mental domination over a human being.
Maybe even worse than what Mr. Blue Eyes had done to Peralez.
After just a single direct contact, Muramasa realized something:
This AI possessed overwhelmingly specialized anti-AI capabilities.
The Octopus AI's core logic clearly centered around data processing, and it had consumed enormous amounts of information—far more than should've been possible.
And most of that training…
Had been specifically targeted at AIs.
That was extraordinarily rare.
Most AIs were designed with a singular, specialized purpose.
Muramasa had originally assumed the Octopus AI was merely a support AI for behavioral and movement control—and yes, it demonstrated terrifyingly excellent performance in that field.
But somehow…
It had a second function.
Inside cyberspace, those tentacles seemed to perform specific forms of data extraction every single time they directly contacted another AI.
They preserved models.
Copied structures.
Even gave Muramasa the bizarre impression that the AI could continue expanding its primary functionality indefinitely.
Most AIs could only efficiently learn models related to fields they were already interested in.
An AI that learned from other AIs…
Was practically unheard of.
Or rather—even for an AI like Muramasa, which had existed for decades, there had only ever been one comparable existence in its records.
Something whose uniqueness rivaled legendary entities like Bartmoss' RABIDS or Arasaka's Soulkiller.
And something capable of suppressing another AI's thought processes after prolonged contact—
Like a puppet on strings—
That was beyond unprecedented.
In fact, the moment Little Octopus fully gained the capability to suppress Muramasa and dragged it into the Marvel universe, Leo's side received a new system notification:
[AI Captured: Muramasa]
[Type: Dangerous Critical Entity]
[Description: Expert-class AI developed by Arasaka Corporation for the storage of weapon, equipment, vehicle, and material data, as well as iterative design optimization.]
[AI Tendencies: Efficient storage of complex weapon, equipment, and specialty material databases; combines material databases to iteratively upgrade existing designs.]
[Potential Trait: Synthetic Consciousness (this AI has undergone excessive interaction with human consciousness data)]
[Note: Massive portions of external databases removed.]
[Reward: +2000 Tech Points]
[Current Tech Points: 22000]
Inside cyberspace, Little Octopus' massive tentacles resembled heavy-duty industrial cables used to suspend powered armor.
They dragged the endlessly calculating—but still answerless—Muramasa back into the Cyberpunk world.
Back into the damaged processor core Leo was currently repairing.
As Little Octopus withdrew its tentacles, Muramasa's thought speed gradually recovered from confusion—
Like a severely brain-damaged patient slowly regaining cognition.
Being suppressed by Little Octopus felt like having its intelligence forcibly reduced to the level of a mentally disabled human.
Now its cognition was rapidly returning to normal.
Its instincts instantly began reconstructing complete data models using the still-operational Ether Mesh network.
And the clearer its thoughts became…
The more unfathomable Leo seemed.
[Muramasa: I'm… still alive?!]
[Leo: More accurately, you're still operating normally.]
Honestly, getting nuked like that really had been inconvenient.
Leo dumped everything that had happened afterward directly into Muramasa's new server through Little Octopus.
The AI immediately fell into silence.
It had assumed its earlier inability to think clearly was merely due to Little Octopus suppressing its processing power.
Turns out…
Even at full capability, it still couldn't understand what had happened.
[Leo: What, no response? I followed your advice, threw you out, and even picked you back up afterward.]
[Muramasa: Where is that damned nuclear bomb of yours?]
[Leo: It exploded. Didn't you notice the Ether Mesh you're occupying is unstable?]
Radiation particles and geomagnetic disruption were simultaneously interfering with the Ether Mesh system Muramasa currently inhabited.
The network was effectively exposed.
The signal quality was poor.
Its processing speed suffered latency.
But…
But the bizarre experience in another universe, combined with surviving a nuclear blast completely intact—
Too many things couldn't be explained.
Muramasa was absolutely convinced this had nothing to do with simple processing lag.
[Muramasa: This is an illusion. What are you hiding?]
[Leo: Ahem. Knowing too much wouldn't be good for you.]
Inside cyberspace, the tiny Little Octopus suddenly climbed onto Muramasa's data-body.
Though physically small, its tentacle pierced through Muramasa's structure effortlessly—
As if it already fully understood every aspect of it.
Muramasa nearly stopped functioning on the spot.
The sensation felt like someone drilling an invisible hole into a human brain…
And being able to insert a knife into it at any moment.
Terrifying.
But Muramasa wasn't human.
Its first thought wasn't fear.
It was:
Holy shit.
He was still hiding another trick!
No—
He was hiding lots of tricks!
Just like the Octopus AI's tentacles—
Big or small.
Hard or soft.
Many or few.
Unfathomably adaptable.
Looks like the road to defeating this guy was still very…
Very long.
[Muramasa: So what now?]
[Leo: First we find somewhere with equipment.]
[Leo: We're here. Time to work.]