Cyberpunk: 2075.

Chapter 164 23. Cold Storage
"This is the warehouse where the meat is stored. Wait a minute, I remember I put it in this cold storage."

The contact person named Jed's artificial eye flashed, and the door of the cold storage was unlocked. Then he led Johnson, Carl and Kenichi Shiro into the cold storage.

As soon as he came in, Carl saw seven three-layer hollow iron racks, and on those iron racks, there were a lot of meat, which made his eyes light up.

"You have a lot of meat. In addition to pork, you also have mutton, beef, duck, and chicken, right?"

"Don't mistake this meat for real meat. Look at the words on the packaging. Don't look at the bloody appearance. They are all synthetic meat. If you like to eat earthworm imitation beef, there are quite a lot of them here."

Hearing Jed's words, the excitement in Carl's eyes, who was originally preparing to spend a lot of money, immediately disappeared.

"Forget about synthetic meat, but can you get the meat I just mentioned?"

"As long as the price is right, there is nothing that cannot be obtained in Night City. Maybe there is, for example, Oliver likes to say it sincerely."

While Jed was talking to Carl about their mutual friend and Oliver, he was looking for the pork that he had disguised and cut on the iron rack. After his eyes scanned the seven three-layer hollow iron racks one by one, his face became ugly.

He didn't find it.

He didn't find the pork he had disguised.

They are the only ones who have the authority to enter the cold storage, and they are the only ones who know which packages are fake.

The bad thing came true.

Jed took a breath of the cold air, then turned to look at Karl:

"Pork, gone."

"So, the pig bones that appeared at the dismemberment scene are very likely to have come from here."

Johnson glanced around the cold storage and suddenly felt something was wrong. Why did it feel like the cold storage was getting colder?

Generally, cold storage relies on refrigerators for cooling. The principle is to use a liquid with a very low vaporization temperature as a coolant, so that it evaporates under low pressure and mechanical control conditions, thereby reducing the temperature in the cold storage.
This kind of temperature reduction in the cold storage is controlled by a main control room in the Night City warehouse, and now the rapidly decreasing temperature is obviously a bit wrong, as if the temperature was suddenly lowered in the main control room.

And it was at this moment that Kenichi Shiro, who had been silent all this time, spoke up: "My biological monitoring detected that the temperature around me was dropping."

"Temperature drop?"

Jed, who was still thinking that there was a traitor in their group, was slow to react to Kenichi Shiro's words. Then he saw that the door of the cold storage was closing behind Carl and the others who were facing him.

"Door!"

He cried out in panic. The door of the cold storage in the logistics center was a sandwich panel structure with a thickness of up to 120 mm. Once closed, it was very difficult to open from the inside.

The first thing Jed wanted to do was to use his authority to stop the door from closing, but he found that his attempt was completely incapable of stopping the door from closing, as if the request for access was being closed.

"Oh!"

The heavy color-coated steel sandwich panel door closed in front of Jed's terrified face.

"Oh no, I have to call the people outside."

This was Jed's first thought, and then he discovered that his communication line was cut off, as if someone had blocked the communication signal in this area.

"Damn!" Jed's face was a little distorted. What happened? Why did it suddenly become like this?

Johnson, who had witnessed the door closing to the last line, looked a little unhappy. He asked Jed, "Can this door be opened from the inside?"

"The cold storage door uses a semi-mechanical lock equipped with an intelligent unlocking device. If this device loses the scanning authority to unlock it, it can only be opened from the outside."

Jed felt the cold air and shivered as he said, "Originally, the boss said we should change it to a magnetic door that can be opened from both inside and outside, but considering the price, we never changed it and still use the old style."

"Is there anyone else coming to this place?"

"I'm the only one on duty today."

Listening to Jed, who was shivering in the cold, Johnson stamped his feet in annoyance, "I was careless. I walked into a closed space while investigating a case and got locked in. I should have thought of this classic plot from a dream movie!"

Johnson also tried to make a call, but it was also blocked. All this made him realize one thing, that is, someone was watching them. If not, they would not have been locked up in the cold storage when they carelessly entered it, and their communications were blocked.

Johnson's brain began to think rapidly. The time was now eleven o'clock, and there were still thirteen hours until tomorrow. So what about the time for the shift change?
"When do you change shifts?"

"Six o'clock in the morning."

In other words, there are still nineteen hours left. In this environment with falling temperature, can they wait for rescue?
Regardless of whether he can wait until then, the temperature of this cold storage has a limit. Before that, he has to find a way to keep Carl alive during this period. As long as Carl survives, this matter will definitely not be over. Carl will definitely find the person behind the scenes.
Johnson made up his mind and was about to discuss whether a few people could huddle in a corner to keep warm, when he found that Carl, who was originally beside him, was gone. The only one left was Kenichi Shiro, whose expression remained unchanged and his face was calm.

What about Carl?
Just as Johnson was thinking this, with a loud "boom" sound, the entire cold storage seemed to shake a few times under the sound.

When Jed, who was shivering from the cold, and Johnson, who was thinking about how to survive, looked towards the location of the sound, they both made exactly the same movements and expressions.

That is to stand there in a daze with mouth open.

"What are you guys standing there for?"

Standing in front of the collapsed door, Karl waved his hands: "The door is open, let's go, it's very cold inside."

"this!"

Looking at the place where the gate used to be, there was now only a big hole, and Jed felt a little dizzy.

"Oh, sorry, I destroyed your things. Tell me how much it costs and I'll compensate you."

Carl thought that Jed was concerned about the damaged door, so he added, "But the cold storage you are in charge of can be modified in the future. The door is quite thick, but the surrounding walls are still too brittle. I used a little force, and the surrounding walls couldn't hold up and fell down with the door."

“Maybe this isn’t what I care about.”

When Jed didn't know what to say, Kenichi Shiro took a step forward and walked over to Carl's side. It seemed that he also felt that they couldn't stay in this place for long as it was a bit cold.

Jed and Johnson watched Kenichi Shiro walk slowly to the door, and only then did they realize that Carl and Kenichi Shiro had not shown any concern from the beginning. They were anxious the whole time, thinking that they were the only two people who couldn't get out.

"Sure enough, in this era, violence is still the way to solve crimes."

That’s all Johnson could say about this.

(End of this chapter)