Warhammer: The Time Traveler

Chapter 28 Hackers
The desert sun blazed down on the earth as always, steaming the ruins of the abandoned town with distorted waves of heat.

Inside the workshop, Chen Yu had just finished fine-tuning the transmission joints of a fighter jet. The servo skull floated silently to the side, the eerie blue light flowing in its eye sockets reflecting the constantly updated data stream.

Just then, a familiar signal signature came from the external monitoring network.

"Old buddy, the MAN team is here." Chen Yu's synthesized voice was calm and even as the optical lens scanned the convoy information marked on the visual interface. "Three vehicles. Thermal signature detected, everyone is present."

He paused slightly as the sensors picked up a new detail. "Hmm? There's a faint biomarker with unusually active neural activity... It's a hacker."

He was not surprised.

As the depth and risk of transactions increase, the Mann team will inevitably have to utilize all its core members, including previously unseen technical experts.

Soon, the familiar Goodwood, which had undergone numerous repairs and enhancements, led two other equally weather-beaten modified vehicles into the outskirts of town and parked in the safe zone cleared by the machine gunners.

The car door opened, and Mann's tall figure stepped out first, followed closely by Dorio, whose sharp eyes scanned the surroundings—she keenly noticed that the town seemed "cleaner" than when she last visited, with some obstructive debris neatly piled up, as if serving as a silent warning.

Falco, Rebecca, and Pila also got off the bus one after another.

Pila moved his perfectly repaired shoulder, looking somewhat excited.

Rebecca, as always, was the first to skip and hop towards the workshop entrance, but this time she was accompanied by an unfamiliar figure.

She was a petite girl, even slightly thinner than Rebecca.

She was dressed in dark, close-fitting, easy-to-move clothing, with a slightly oversized bulletproof jacket over it. The hood was pulled low, covering most of her face, revealing only her delicately shaped jawline and slightly pale lips.

Her movements were light and quiet, like a wary cat, a stark contrast to Rebecca's liveliness.

Most notably, a high-quality data cable was attached to the back of her head, with the other end tucked into the inside pocket of her jacket—one of the hallmarks of a top hacker.

"Boss! We're here! And we've brought a new friend!" Rebecca's voice was still full of energy. She grabbed the girl's wrist and walked quickly to the workshop entrance.

The rest of Mann's team followed.

Mann's gaze met Chen Yu's crimson optical lens, and he nodded slightly in acknowledgment.

Chen Yu's gaze passed over Rebecca and landed on the new face.

His sensors quickly completed the scan: low muscle density, no obvious bone structure enhancement, few prosthetic implants, but abnormally active neural network activity, especially in the cerebral cortex, with an energy metabolism rate far higher than normal, and detected a high-intensity encrypted data stream being silently exchanged between its built-in interface and an external device.

Typical characteristics of a neurohacker.

“This is Sasha,” Mann introduced, his voice low. “She’s a hacker on our team. We needed her to provide support from behind the scenes for some previous projects, so she couldn’t come along. Rebecca said you might need… someone more ‘technical,’ and she thought Sasha should come and get acquainted with the team.”

His tone was calm, but with a hint of scrutiny, as if he were observing Chen Yu's reaction to the appearance of this important member of the team.

Sasha slightly raised her head, and in the shadows beneath her hood, a pair of bright, slightly amber-colored eyes quickly and cautiously swept over Chen Yu's massive mechanical body, the writhing mechanical tentacles, and the suspended servo skull.

There was no obvious fear in her gaze; rather, it was more like an extremely focused technical assessment, trying to analyze the technological level and potential threats of the entity before her.

She simply nodded slightly, her voice soft yet clear and steady: "Hello." "Hacker. A valuable professional field." Chen Yu's response was equally direct, without any pleasantries. "Your neural network is highly active, and your data encryption methods are quite interesting. I hope your abilities match your hardware configuration."

His tone made it impossible to tell whether it was praise or a simple statement; it sounded as if he were evaluating a tool.

Sasha's lips seemed to twitch slightly, but she didn't answer. She simply nodded again and pulled her hood down a little lower, seemingly unaccustomed to this direct, "scanning" attention.

"Did you bring the things?" Chen Yu turned his attention back to Mann.

Mann gestured to Dorio.

Dorio and Falco lifted a heavy, cold-looking metal box from the trunk of one of the cars.

There were no markings on the box, but the edges were stained with some dark red, sticky dirt that had not been completely wiped clean.

The box was placed on the workbench designated by Chen Yu, the lock was opened, and cold air escaped.

Three prosthetic bodies were neatly fixed inside.

Their design language is full of the coldness and efficiency of military technology, with sharp lines, extremely high interface standards, and a matte dark gray surface to reduce glare.

Intricate energy conduits and neural interface cables are embedded within it like exquisite patterns.

One of them was a military-grade subcutaneous armor covering the entire spine and rib area, with an integrated micro-impact dispersion system and an emergency hemostasis injection pump. However, at this moment, there was a noticeable dent and tear on the metal surface, with dried tissue fluid and blood clots still stuck to the edges.

The other item is the "Achilles" tactical Achilles tendon and calf reinforcement system, which provides explosive power and stable lower body support, but its connection port has burn marks, as if it was forcibly detached by some kind of energy weapon.

The last item was a pair of "optical camouflage" system generators, which are usually installed on the shoulder blades, but one of the generators had its casing cracked, exposing the burnt precision chip inside.

These prosthetic bodies had clearly been through a brutal battle and had been extremely "roughly" removed from their former owners, bearing the marks of blood and violence.

The members of Mann's team remained silent, looking at the prosthetic bodies with complex expressions.

The process of acquiring these things was clearly far from pleasant.

However, Chen Yu didn't care at all.

His mechanical tentacles had already nimbly reached out and carefully picked up the subcutaneous armor, the fingertip sensors emitting subtle scanning beams.

"The military-grade 'Fortress' series third-generation subcutaneous armor has an energy distribution efficiency that is 22 percent higher than the commercially available version. The neural interface adopts a two-way feedback design, which is excellent."

His synthesized voice surprisingly revealed a hint of satisfaction: "Biological contamination does not affect materials analysis and structural reverse engineering. Bloodstains and tissue residues actually provide valuable raw data samples of its neural interactions with the original host."

He then inspected two other items: "The Achilles system, the linear accelerator is damaged, but the basic structure is intact."

"Optical camouflage... the core was burned out, but the scattering lens and diffraction grid still have research value."

“Excellent, the quality of this batch of goods far surpasses the previous ‘waste’.”

(End of this chapter)