When the Hacker wakes from his healing coma, he finds Citadel Station under control of SHODAN, who, without her ethical constraints, has gone rogue and believing herself to be a kind of god. Following the operation, the Hacker is put into a six-month healing coma. After succeeding in hacking SHODAN, removing the AI's ethical constraints, and handing control over to Diego, the protagonist undergoes surgery to implant the promised Neural Interface. To entice cooperation, Diego promises the Hacker a valuable military grade cyberjack implant. Diego offers to drop all charges against the Hacker in exchange for a confidential hacking of SHODAN, the artificial intelligence that controls the Station.

He was subsequently arrested by TriOptimum soldiers and taken to Citadel Station, and brought before Edward Diego, a corrupt TriOptimum executive. He broke into the computer systems of the TriOptimum Corporation and accessed files concerning Citadel Station, a space station owned by TriOptimum. Virtually nothing is known about the Hacker, other than he lives on Earth in New Atlanta's Sector 11, building 71-G.

System shock look at you hacker