My Cyber Psychosis is Task Prompt

John looked at the turbine spewing out a massive stream of water beside him.

Crawling inside that thing...

And working in the dark for two hours?

"Gotta make a living, no choice. There’s definitely risk. We saw scratch marks inside, and... entangled rubber sheets."

The foreman’s face turned pale.

"I can pretty much guess. Since the connection was instant, and the downtime was so long, someone must have gone down there..."

John pieced together the incident from them.

The missing maintenance worker took a private job, the equipment accidentally started, leading to several people being shredded into pieces by the turbulent flows, leaving signs of struggle on the dark inner walls.

How do you find the bodies?

John looked at the cross-district bridge nearby, under the hot, pale sun lay a gently rippling water surface, with various floatsam and trash evenly spread along the shoreline.

"...Tch, f*ck."

After pondering for a moment, he asked the maintenance workers.

"Who’s supposed to compensate the deceased?"

"Thermal Thread Heavy Industries, no doubt about it."

They replied without much hesitation.

The turbine’s start-up was a very slow process, but given the situation at the time, rescuing the maintenance workers would have caused large-scale equipment short-circuiting and more malfunctions.

A decision was made from the "cost-effectiveness" perspective.

Now the municipality doesn’t want to foot the bill.

Thermal Thread Heavy Industries rakes it in by using this turbine system to draw river water for industrial cooling in the factory district but is stingy when it comes to compensating a few unlucky souls.

"Don’t let me catch you..."

The gang leader might have been in too much pain; his eyes turned spiteful, even starting to head upward and glare at the construction crew. 𝒻𝑟𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝑛𝘰𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮

Bang!

He shut his mouth.

He opened his head.

John tossed away the battered gun in his hand, its magazine emptied.

"I need to make a call. Could I get some privacy?"

The maintenance workers grabbed their boxes and bolted.

Anyway, the pay was settled, and the elimination of the gang member couldn’t possibly be pinned on them.

[Contact - Barry Kit [Voice Call]]

John cleared things up.

"...Traced it to the end."

Barry, after listening, gave a new location.

John mounted his motorcycle, raced through the riverside warehouse district, and dived into the old street’s abandoned building, immediately realizing:

The matter wasn’t over yet.

An unlicensed Calormen transport truck.

Both sides were severely scraped with paint, the trunk was pried open, and aside from the main and co-driver’s seat, the interior was stripped bare.

Two packs of weapons lay on the rusty iron countertop.

Still bearing labels from the ECPD evidence room.

Barry and five burly masked men stood together, all dressed in street thug attire, yet emanating a distinct cop vibe; their weapon-checking motions were "academic style."

All but him wore masks.

Barry saw John coming, and casually threw something over, nodding to let him pick something handy.

[Item: Prajna Evil Ghost [Mask]]

The weapons were all distributed.

Packages, labels, and a few trinkets that hadn’t been dealt with were tossed into a wire bin and burnt clean.

Breathing echoed inside the mask.

Not a word was spoken inside the vehicle.

[Weapon: Rongju-Hound]

[Module: Basic Armor-Piercing]

An extremely cheap street rifle, the magazine was second-hand, and the grip’s surface still had grease and partially-torn stickers.

"Don’t use Sianweistan."

Barry’s voice came through. "No time to prepare a dedicated voice changer for you, so once we’re at the scene, keep quiet. Don’t aim for the head, bullets should be aimed at limbs and non-lethal areas."

"Where to?"

"You’ll see when you arrive after we get off."

Err—

The brake screeched shortly and sharply.

[Eden City - Thermal Thread Heavy Industries Plant]

The hulking men in the back jumped out like fish, swiftly aiming down various directions on the street.

[Mission Objective Updated]

[Collaborate with the robbery operation. (Not Achieved)]

Barry, wearing a lion-head mask, tossed out a bomb.

Rumble~

Boom!

The metal iron door jumped right where it stood.

A tense gap formed.

Security personnel emerged from the kiosks and factory area.

Ratatatat!

The pre-aimed muzzles immediately opened fire, and those weekly-paid security guards were shot and fell to the ground at once.

No one stood up.

John found no good opportunity and couldn’t grasp the situation well, so all he could do was shoot some CCTV cameras on his way forward in a crouched position. By the time he came to, the front line had already advanced into the factory area.

He rushed in and was immediately shot.

There were mercenaries in the workshop, and they brought full team professional equipment.

"Permission to shoot threatening targets!"

Barry immediately modified the orders.

John felt someone reach out and pull him behind. As he changed direction, several team members around had already formed a firepower suppression.

The fence was hit, sparks flying everywhere.

The person who fired earlier was lying on their back on the steel corridor.

John activated the scan.

The combat mode captured weapon outlines, immediately identifying threatening targets and excluding them from regular employees, marking them with red frames.

This search mode is a built-in program of Igdrasir.

It synchronizes functionality to Messiah’s Eye, making the combat process more efficient and intelligent.

Rata, rata, rata.

John’s shooting was very rhythmic, even attracting the side-eyes of other members, who saw:

Within the three-sided shooting range of the factory, several targets were hit with the gunfire, and all uniformly hit the right shoulder blade first, then the rest of the body as a final blow.

The visual effect was comparable to target practice at a fifty-meter training room.

"Holy sh*t!"

"What’s his deal?"

Exclamations came from behind the masks.

Except for the surprise shot, John demonstrated sovereign-level lethality inside the factory.

These mercenaries were quite mediocre.

Visibly only a little stronger than a freshly formed team.

John purely overwhelmed them with his prosthetic body and experience, and his firearm was really bad—if he had been using the original Plato’s Mechanical, there would be no need to waste time with follow-up shots.

Mercenary firepower was swiftly cleared.

Other members roared and shouted, raising their weapons at the panicking ordinary people, and then moved to control different areas as in a bank heist.

These people wore voice modulators.

Some even took out mini speakers to play pre-recorded audio files.

[Put your hands where I can see them. For the sake of yourselves and your families, do not move unnecessarily. Obey our orders, and act smart to get through today safely...]

Barry then led John and the others to rush to the second floor.

Bang!

A bullet blew the door lock apart.

The two rushed into the clerical zone one after the other, forcing the men and women behind the desks to stand up, asking where the boss and valuable items were located.

Someone pointed out directions.

John and Barry advanced with their guns, while those trailing behind rounded up and controlled the hostages in that area.

Bang!

Barry used a shotgun to blast open an inner room’s door.

A middle-aged man in a suit raised his hands high, dropping a delicate short-barrel shotgun to the floor, and a stray bullet even pierced the iron sheet of a filing cabinet.

"F*ck you, bastard!"

Barry cursed, raising his gun to knock the man down.

John noticed a nameplate on the desk—Flavio Sweeney.

Barry picked up the nose-bleeding man and used the gun to force him to open the safe, stuffing the funds card and various valuables into a black canvas bag carried by his side.

John leaned against the doorframe, watching.

There certainly were other mercenaries in the factory area.

But when John engaged fervent gunfire with others in the corridor for a dozen seconds, the few remaining resisted began to quit, seemingly realizing their lives were worth more than a weekly wage.

Barry already handled the scene.

He took out a trigger grenade, placing it in Flavio’s palm.

"GOGOGO, now!"

Two masked burly men leaped over the railing, directly jumping to the first floor of the factory and started sprinting.

Other members tossed smoke grenades.

An expensive box truck roared out from the warehouse, smashing open the twisted metal gates and speeding away.

Police sirens screeched across the opposite street.

Drones hovered overhead.

Barry took off his lion mask, raised his head, and tore off the voice modulator stuck to his throat.

His Messiah’s Eye flashed as he spoke to the communication channel.

"Have the officers enter the factory area to check the situation, seal off the routes, check every car passing through the factory area and log the statements from witnesses..."

John poked his head out of the car to observe.

The patrolling drones and police cars all moved, brushing past them and charging toward the affected factory.