John felt slightly better. He forced himself up, flushed the toilet, leaned against the door to listen, and pulled out a Special Inhibitor, inserting it into the data slot. The negative symptoms quickly subsided. He regained consciousness and smelled a burning odor. Immediately, he pulled out the burnt chip and hid it on his body. The mirror lit up with a circle of lights. John saw his cheeks regaining color. [Mission Progress Update] [Talk to Eden. (Optional)] [Talk to Tinfoil. (Optional)] "F*ck, do you want me to die?" John washed repeatedly with water. He wiped away the residual water stains, went out, and found two members of Harbor Company standing at the elevator. "You okay? Why don’t you sit for a while." The military doctor looked at him with arms crossed. He calmly sat down on the sofa. The sliding door of the training room was not closed. Eden Weitz had already arrived on the scene — he and Tinfoil were talking next to the terminal in the training room, but due to the limited angle, he couldn’t read their lips. John closed his eyes and began to recall. He had been messed with by Black Light several times, trying to find some pattern during the suffering. John was fine when connecting to the terminal. Back in the camp, reading Talia’s aerial chip, accessing the maintenance system in the garage on Dan Street, visiting public websites for item information... During those times, Black Light was very quiet. He could activate it actively. For example, debugging door devices, hacking into a system, attacking independent ICE firewalls. In some cases, Black Light would go out of control. For example, inserting a behavior chip, connecting with the clinic’s system, and just now, when Tinfoil said to conduct a debug with him... A thought suddenly flashed through John’s mind. After thinking, he reached a conclusion... The keyword that triggers Black Light’s rampage is "intervention"! The behavior chip would control his actions. The clinic system would forcibly access prosthetic body data. The Harbor training system too, it requires iris projection, neural conduction, secondary central connection... When the host began accessing John’s data, trying to operate the prosthetic body to render images... it triggered Black Light’s preset mechanism, thus causing a reverse rampage, consuming the entire system! John took a deep breath. He figured out Black Light’s rampage mechanism but aroused suspicion from Harbor Company’s senior hacker. How to overcome this hurdle? "Let’s talk, John. Stripbone and you two go out, give us some privacy." Eden waved to let others leave, leaving only Tinfoil. "I don’t like beating around the bush, let’s get to the point... Tinfoil suspects signs of hacking in the system, but she scanned twice, even went deep diving, and found nothing, it just seemed like a flicker due to some power shortage." John sat without speaking. Tinfoil leaned against the door and said, "I’ve ruled out other possibilities, leaving only the final guess, you need to do a cyber psychoanalysis test." He very cooperatively pulled out the data wire and returned to the training room with Eden, inserting it according to instructions. [Training System Connecting...] The progress bar in front of John smoothly jumped. At this time, Black Light controlled the backend. He could even see Tinfoil’s login and operations, with all permissions open by default. John wore a Super Sensing Player. The device began rendering, accompanied by an extremely intense flash of white light. The view began to blur. The scene in front of John changed. First, it was pitch black, then peeled off, with the neon lights of skyscrapers draping over him. [Tinfoil: Scene rendering is normal, I will start increasing the reality of the environment and connect the sensory system.] John heard the clamor. He looked around and found himself in an alley between buildings, underfoot was a wet cement ground, scattered with soft, moist discarded paper. The garbage pile emitted a foul odor. Behind, beside a wire fence, clutter was piled up, cockroaches and rats scurried inside. The rainwater pipe extended along the building exterior. Moss clung to the walls, liquid streamed down inside the pipes, gathering into a drainage well... The hovercar light beams were moving. John tilted his neck, cold rain drifting in, tapping patter on the buildings. The hydrophobic jacket was soaked. The raindrops slightly acidic, slipping into the clothing, making the shirt stick to the skin. His fingers became moist. Rainwater dripped along the metal arm onto the manhole cover. "F*ck, it’s so damn real." John looked around in disbelief. "I’ve played with Super Sensing Chips, but this player is just awesome!" [Tinfoil: You think wearing VR goggles to watch porn is the limit? The upper limit of a Super Sensing Chip is very high, this set of training equipment is a product of cutting-edge technology.] [Tinfoil: The test is already underway, the scene simulation is maximized, which will stimulate your emotions and prosthetic body, your data is currently within normal range.] [Eden: Load BDU-17 into it.] [Loading behavior data units...] Google seaʀᴄh 𝔫𝔬𝔳𝔢𝔩~𝕗𝕚𝕣𝕖~𝙣𝙚𝙩 Everything happened very briefly, as if the data world and the real world were separated. Footsteps came from outside the alley on a rainy night. The light was obstructed by a person, casting a long shadow. "Eden? How come you’re..." John blurted out, looking at the guy in front of him: Short hair, tall and strong, looked German, both arms were military implants. His eyes were vicious to the point of death. A dog tag with blurred digits hung from his neck. This guy looked ninety percent like Eden, but the details and prosthetic model didn’t match, and his ankles were still flesh, not turned into metal products. [Eden: It’s just a string of code, to be precise, it’s a combat unit I created in my youth through motion capture and massive calculations, a very good sparring partner.] [Mission Objective Update] [Fight BDU-17. (Not Achieved)] John could barely follow a few moves, finding some of his prosthetics were superior to the opponent’s. But as the distance closed, he could only be pressed. Driven into a corner, John handed over his consciousness to the brain, letting the chip drive the muscles. This move was amazingly effective when fighting Hoffman. At first, it indeed suppressed Eden, but after a couple of rounds, it couldn’t hit the opponent. When his body followed the chip to make a move, Eden could perfectly predict and block in advance, after some painful attempts. John suddenly changed his tactics. He broke down the moves himself, punched Eden’s Adam’s apple, knocking him down, barely winning after three or four resurrections, still covered in injuries. John was full of questions. [Eden: That’s the difference between fighting and combat, John, when you give your body entirely to the chip, it can only replicate the prepared moves.] [If someone shares your chip? Or memorizes the entire set of moves... can they pin you down and beat you?] [Whoever has more chips wins? It doesn’t calculate that way when risking your life, you may get lucky once or twice with ironclad nerves, but you’ll die facing a tough opponent.] Everything before John’s eyes vanished. White light pierced through the dark, shining on his face, the hardness underfoot returned. He reached out to remove the device, returning to the metal-encased close-quarters training room. "No symptoms of cyber psychosis." Tinfoil concluded her judgment.