Ready to blast us, the green haired one raised his palm at Paul. He said "Forget that. We should just kill them!" as he stood up. Mason said "I can't let you do that to my new bosses, C-JAM 434!" He pressed a button and the hole on his palm closed. "What the- Denied!? How did you..." he trailed off as he saw the remote. 628 lunged at him, but Mason pressed a button on his remote that held him in place. "This is untenable. We have to self-destruct now." 628 said. "No way." Both of their chest cavities began to glow white. Mason denied. As he pressed the button the white flashed violet, indigo, and blue. It then turned off. "Even our self-destruct sequences!? How long were we offline!?" 434 demanded. Totally neutered, they could not do anything without permission. "I guess we can keep them as guards here. Red died because people can just run in here and start shooting." I said. "It's not like we can have them standing outside for their friends to pick them up." Paul agreed. With that decided, we went with Mason to the library. They were not happy to see him. They were aggressive to him.
It made sense. He was a reprogrammer that actively hacked and helped kill a PEP unit. There were only a couple of them that we passed on the way there. They tried to bait Mason into fighting him by tripping him and making a list of insults for him. We just dragged Mason along. He was more confused than anything. As far as he was aware, random townsfolk just assaulted him. "Just forget it." Brett said. When we got to the library, he went to the section a book on hacking would likely be. One of the librarians appeared. She held up a book on hacking in her hand and said "Are you looking for this book? I know who you are, Mason LaDip." He nodded and reached for it. I watched as she moved it out of his reach. "You are not welcome here. Please leave or you will be escorted out." she said. That was that, "Let's go." I said. There was nothing in the book that was anywhere near worth pissing off the transmission hub and all the non allied cyborgs in town. We left Mason in the Red Grind. Mason was obviously not welcome in the clan building. We would bring him down for clan meetings.
Seemingly, the hunch I had was correct. There was a cooldown for the mission we did. Multiple Players could influence the direction of the world. Of the few Players on this server, it was split down the middle who to support. It was about 43% for the PEP units and 45% against them. The others just were using the cyberpunk setting of the world to play around. Whether by being doctors, athletes or treating the world as a personal dating simulator. We had a spot in place for all the high ranking cyborgs to meet for the so called "Next Stage". There were also back up plans. We had up to Plan G. That meant 7 possible places. They were placed in order of mission completion. I was not shocked that my area was the primary location. It was also the most guarded secret. The Players on the other side were doing everything they could to stop the mission to be completed. All you needed for the questline was to find 5 PEP units that allied with the Libra Force syndicate. Once there were either less than 5 PEP units that fit that criteria or after a full real world week, the mission would end.
