“You!” the man snapped, looking me over. “You’re security?”

“Ah…” I hesitated, and he stepped in front of me, glaring. My instinct was to shoot the obnoxious little bastard, or at least take him none-too-gently by the throat and shake some sense into him—he literally topped out with his chin about nipple height on me—but still. “Yes sir, of course. How can I help?” I replied, forcing a smile to my face.

“It’s disgraceful!” his wife agreed, also glaring at me. Where he was short and wide, dark, pockmarked skin drenched in sweat, and a bathrobe barely containing the apparent ocean of oil he was covered in, she was the opposite in almost every way.

Tall, so buxom that she clearly wouldn’t fit into a normal robe, and so had left it open at the front, her hair was piled atop her head in something that resembled a drunken builder’s attempt at a skyscraper. And for all her processed beauty, it was clear the soul beneath was anything but.

She was also heavily upgraded, everything from eyelids that reflected the lights overhead in special patterns, to her porcelain teeth, sharp cheekbones and of course eyes with feline slitted pupils as had been the rage…ten years ago.

Everything about her, from the slightly sagging skin to the crow’s feet at the corners of the eyes—smoothed, but still starting to show—screamed “danger” to me.

Too poor to be kept perfect, too stupid to save up or accept that aging happened to us all.

She—and by extension, he—were the worst type of corpo for most people to interact with. Petty, with just enough power to be on the ladder, without enough power to be rich, and without enough brains to know they should be happy with their place. Instead, they’d be constantly blaming anyone they could, and picking fault to make themselves feel superior.

I lumped them in with the same crowd as Captain Tyrannus: powerful enough to be a nightmare to anyone below, vicious to anyone on the same level, and with tongues worn to a goddamn stump from licking the assholes of those above them.

Fucking great. Just my luck to run into them, and presumably why the other security staff had vanished.

“The spa!” the short ass snapped; his wife nodded so viciously she seemed in danger of breaking her neck. “I made a perfectly reasonable request to the massage assistant, and they thought I was ordering them to ‘service’ me! It’s a disgrace!”

“I’m very sorry…” I kept that polite smile plastered to my face. “So, she refused?”

“No, he didn’t!” he snapped. “He dared to touch me, and there I was, stunned, shocked at the effrontery, and totally unable to stop him, I was in so much shock, when my wife walked in…”

“Disgraceful!” she cried, voice rising even higher.

“I dread to think how it looked…” Dickhead frantically babbled on and on about how it was all a misunderstanding, and he wanted that staff member fired, etc.

“I’m sorry, sir. A regrettable misunderstanding,” I assured him, years of dealing with officers’ bullshit coming to the fore as I forced a sad look onto my face. “I’ll see to it that they’re disciplined.”

“Fired, I said! I want them…Wait, why are you blocked out?” He froze, staring at me, clearly expecting to see my personal details, which we’d set to “private” on the local Aug-World relay. “All the local staff are required to be…”

Bowdoin swore in my ear. “Better shut this down. He’s pinging the local node for confirmation…”

“Sir, I’m here from the head office, dealing with a security matter. As you’ll see, my uniform is hardly up to the standards of such an important location, but needs must,” I lied, glancing up and down the corridor. “But, perhaps, you and your wife could follow me into the security office? You could make your complaint to one of the local staff?” I nodded to the door a few steps behind them that, according to the floating Aug-World signs, and subtle wall-mounted ones, led to the main security area.

“What?” he snapped, frowning.

“The office, sir. I’m happy to provide identification, but we need to be in a secure area,” I said firmly. “Sir, I was sent here by…” I hesitated, my on-the-spot-bullshitting skills only getting me so far, before Bowdoin interrupted me, pulling up the corpo organizational chart.

“Hinto, Security Commander Hinto,” he told me.

“Hinto!” I repeated quickly. “I was sent by Security Commander Hinto, and I’m afraid his orders take precedence. I’m sure you understand?”

“Who?” The woman’s nose wrinkled in confusion.

“Jared Hinto?” The man frowned.

“Sir, either you can come right now, or I’m leaving you here,” I said firmly. “Commander Hinto ordered me to make it to the office as fast as I could, forcing me to grab another’s uniform to blend in—”

“You didn’t do that very well,” she sneered, and I glared at her.

“Ma’am, I’m wearing full body armor under this suit,” I pointed out. “Why do you think that is?”

“I’m sure I don’t know!” she replied haughtily, before looking at her husband, and freezing at the sudden look on his face. “D…darling?”

“Jared Hinto is the head of security for the corporation,” he hissed at her. “If he’s sent this, this…”

“Operative,” I said quickly. “Last chance offered, sir. Either come now, or hold your complaint until tomorrow.”

I stepped past them, opening the door with a quick knock from my fake ID, before closing the door behind me. The pair started to move, clearly unwilling to give up on a perfectly good opportunity to complain about something. I didn’t give a shit. When we’d been in the maintenance section, I’d checked the turrets out, and having these idiots with their guest IDs between them and me? I was all in favor of, just in case.

I should be fine. My new permissions and authorizations should be more than I needed, but trust was thin when dealing with fucking turrets.

“I don’t understand!” she snapped at him, and then me. Her voice changed as a hint of fear crept in, the demand becoming a whine. “What’s going on?”

“Commander Hinto is afraid there are spies here. Heavily armed ones. And I need to get to the security office and make sure the site is secure,” I lied to the pair grimly, standing just inside the door, the corridor leading away from us to the security office. “I was ordered to terminate any possible threats…” I set my hand on my handgun, and the shock and horror on their faces was fucking comical. “But…”

“But?” she asked. Her husband stared at my half-drawn gun, his jaw sagging.

“But, if you could prove that you’re not a spy?” I suggested.

“I-I’ve no weapon…” the man stuttered, starting to open his robe, and I shook my head, not needing to fucking see that.

“You could have concealed mods, sir. I’m going to ask you to lead the way to the office. We’ll scan you, and when it’s confirmed that you’re clean? Well, I’ll include your helpfulness in my report to the commander, and you can make your own report. You see? Everyone wins.”

“To Commander Hinto?” the man questioned, sounding unsure.

“The report? Yes, sir. I know he’s reviewing the current upper echelon for loyalty, so there may be…opportunities coming. Although that’s not something for the likes of me to be concerned with.”

“No, no, it’s certainly not. But I take your hint. And yes, I’ll be sure to remember you, should things work out…” he assured me. The look in his eye said he’d already forgotten what I looked like, and was counting the credits his new—totally imaginary—promotion would earn him.

“It’d mean you’d be in my report to the head office as helping me,” I repeated and the woman, clearly the faster on the uptake of the pair, nodded quickly.

“Of course!” She smiled. “And you’d be including my name as helping?”

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“Certainly,” I agreed. “Provided you move along quickly.”

“Oh, of course!” She sneered. “Follow me!”

With that, she was off. Her husband and I stared after her for a few seconds, before we both hurried to catch up. Her husband ran a few steps to get ahead of me, speaking to her in what he clearly thought was a low voice.

“I don’t know about this…It’s all very susp—”

“Be quiet!” she snapped. “A report in the right ear, and we’re climbing the ladder again. No more sitting still! We’ve got that file, but we need to get access to them to use it, so…”

I strode along behind them, doing my best to look as though I was escorting them, as they blatantly discussed what sounded like blackmail material on a superior.

“Man, I know I don’t see them up close that often, but I fucking hate the rich. Almost more than elves,” Bowdoin muttered in my ear. “I mean seriously, how dumb, shitty, and backstabbing can you get?”

“I know,” I murmured.

“No, I mean, that was some amazingly shitty acting on your part, there’s no way that should have worked, but you know why it did?”

“No?”

“Because Barabbas, that’s the short asshole, and Tartaglia, that’s his wife, are such obscene pieces of shit, that they’d take any opportunity to fuck someone else over. I’m in the local node and monitoring them. They’ve both opened up recording. Heh, they tried to connect to a remote facility, that’s how badly they want to get evidence of whatever happens next. They’ve no idea they’re backing their shit up to me.”

“Shit…”

“Oh yeah, I mean, without me you’d be seriously boned here, unless you could get them to stop recording and backing up their blackmail material. I seriously doubt you’d be getting out of this without them having shit on you.

“These people are idiots. That they really think this is going to get their names known by higher-ups? I mean, it will, just not in the way they’re hoping. But still! Then they get access to someone they’ve got shit on—which I mean, surely that’s fucking unlikely. If they try something like that, I’m betting an AI gets sent after them and erases everything digital, then a hit erases them—or they get to hand you in if it’s bullshit. She’s already tried sending a message to a friend of hers…Basically, everything they send will show as sent, but it’s all going out into the great wide nothing…Yeah, she’s gonna try to get you in the recording, so watch it. She won’t be able to send it out, but if she keeps it…” His voice trailed off.

“Be aware, any attempt to capture me on a recording will be grounds for its server’s erasure by military-grade AI,” I said quickly, stepping up close to the pair. “At the end of this operation, you’ll have your implants examined, so please, be aware of the risk.”

“Of course!” Tartaglia lied, angling around and trying to see me anyway, until she felt the gun I rammed into her spine through the bathrobe.

“That was your only warning,” I said. “Commander Hinto authorized the execution of any threats to my mission…”

“Uh…of course!” she agreed, going back to staring straight ahead.

“Fuck. I don’t know what she just did. I’m dipping the feed. She’s sent something encrypted—can’t crack the code, not anytime soon, so I’ve locked it.”

I shook my head, having no clue what the fucking hacker was up to, and leaving it be.

This wasn’t going well, but as we approached the security office at the end of the corridor, I saw the turrets clearly, and I swallowed hard.

Those fuckers, I’d have had serious problems with.

I recognized them, and all my suspicions were proved right. Whatever was going on here wasn’t fucking small scale. Bowdoin’s guess that my stealth suit might not have worked was an understatement. Last time I’d seen these kind of turrets, I was in the army and they’d been deployed outside one of our armories.

Seeing them here, I suddenly realized how fucking lucky I’d been to get into the maintenance area. If I’d tried sneaking in here directly, I’d have been seen instantly, and I’d have been fucking shredded a quarter second later.

Now? Marching along the corridor behind Tweedle-dim and Tweedle-fuckwit? I stood a chance. I had to hope that whoever had set this up was cheap and dumb. If these mil-spec turrets were backed up by a mil-spec AI in the security office?

We could still be utterly fucking hosed.

Bowdoin?

I sent the message, getting a frown as he popped up in my feed again, nodding for me to speak.

“Don’t worry, I’m deep enough in your system architecture nobody is going to be able to read me. What’s up?” he asked.

Mil-spec turrets. I recognize the model. Stealth suits definitely wouldn’t have worked. If we can’t get control in the office, I need you to get the girls out, and fucking fast. There’s a LOT more creds been spent here than there should be.

“Uh…” He paused, then nodded. I guessed he was taking an image from my augs and running it for a match against some database. “I’m not seeing anything special…”

Check Takemoto mil-contracts, perimeter defense, autonomous and net sharing.

“Shit,” he grunted, and I tensed involuntarily as we stepped out of the end of the corridor into a waiting area. One that was entirely covered by the two turrets.

Gotta go. Watch over me, and DO NOT try to hack them. If we can’t get into the security office? We’re fucked and I’ll let myself out, don’t worry.

“What do you mean, you’ll…Oh.” He winced as I sent him an image I had stored in my RI’s memory. It was another we used to use when speaking to officers, one that I or another of the NCOs would send to each other.

The image was of a soldier lifting his handgun to his head and taking the express route out of the army.

Bowdoin took the hint, going silent as I stepped around the pair who were hesitating by the security office’s reinforced glass. There were two figures inside I could see dimly. The glass was deliberately tinted so that you’d see if there was movement, but nothing clear. Assumedly it was so that if you were a threat…or more likely, an asshole corpo complaining that your latest maid wasn’t friendly enough…they could get rid of you without being unduly bullied.

It was fine for the lower ranks to be bullied, but the actual management of the place didn’t need that shit.

Will my pass definitely get me in there?

“Uh…should do, double-checking…” Bowdoin started, even as the woman stepped up and glared at the reflective glass, before snapping—fuck knows why she thought that was appropriate—at me that she’d “done her part.”

She also deliberately fixed on my face, and I saw the triumphant gleam in her eye as she made sure she had my face recorded. Her husband spoke up, asking whether he could still make his complaint, then directing a repeat of his bullshittery at the shadowed figures on the other side of the glass.

For fuck’s sake.

I shook my head, knocking on the system architecture and feeling a massive upswelling of relief as the door into the security office accepted my ident, and the pair of turrets continued to track from side to side, utterly uninterested in me.

The door next to me clunked as the lock released, and I was moving before even I knew what I was doing, stepping into the room, and bringing my gun around.

I didn’t hesitate, viewing it as the only fucking chance I had, and I fired twice, one shot taking the man at the desk in the forehead. He’d been looking at me in confusion—I was wearing one of their uniforms, after all. The second shot took his friend who’d been standing behind him, only half listening to tweedle-dim, in the meat of his neck.

He crashed to the floor even as his friend collapsed dead. He was frantically trying to stanch the bleeding. Two quick steps took me to the server stack. A sealed door kept it hermetically sealed, and I pointed the gun at the panicking, heavily bleeding figure on the ground.

“Open it, and you get a medikit. Don’t, and you get a bullet. Three seconds. One, two…” I snarled, and before I could get to three, the door popped.

“Good choice.” I took a step and plugged the cable into the server stack.

“Working,” Bowdoin said distractedly. “You might want to give him that medikit. We’re going to need him.”

“Here.” I plucked the spare I kept in my left arm free and tossed it to the figure on the ground, who frantically uncovered the injector module and jabbed it into his shoulder, close to the neck.

“This is how this is going to work,” I told him. “You’re going to give my hacker root access to your Keystone. He’s going to verify all your details and transfer all authority to me. I’ll do the job I’m here to do, and then I’ll ghost.”

“N…no…” He started to refuse, and I shot him in the kneecap, spreading blood and bone fragments everywhere as he screamed.

“Wrong answer,” I said. “Now, look, there’s one outcome here where you don’t die. Unless, of course, you want to die? Do you? Is that it?”

He shook his head frantically, and I nodded.

“Okay, so we’ve got control of the system—”

“No, we fucking don’t,” Bowdoin snapped at me. “Incoming security RI—this isn’t fucking good!”

“Give me your access, or I kill you.” I pressed the gun to the wounded corpo-sec officer’s head. “Seriously, you give me access? They might kill you later. They might just fire you. I, on the other hand, will definitely fucking kill you right goddamn now!”

I dragged the gun across and shot him in the other knee, before ramming it against his crotch.

“NOW!” I roared in his face, only to sense a sudden connection form as Bowdoin sent out a ping to him, via me, and he accepted it, transferring the details over.

“I’ve got root access, authorizing us, patching…RI has accepted…I’m linking through him, it’ll be quicker…Be back soon.”

“Bowdoin?” I snarled, gritting my teeth, as the pair outside the security office got my attention again.

“Fuck’s sake, what?” he snarled. “Do you have any idea how much I’m fucking doing right now?”

“No clue. Do we have control of the turrets?”

“Yes!”

“And there’s no signals getting out?”

“Do you think I’m a fucking idiot?” he raged. “Of course not!”

“And those two?” I peered through the security glass at the now-silent idiots who I’d used as a distraction.

“They’re broadcasting to a spoof address. Now, can I fucking go before this RI figures out what we’re doing and kills us both? Huh? You mind?”

“Go.” I unplugged the data access cable from my Keystone, and forced the bleeding man on the ground to let me plug it into him instead. That done, and with the pair of corpo idiots on the other side of the glass, I tipped the corpse of the first man out of his seat, and pulled his belt off, rolling the other man facedown—with some screams of pain on his side—and binding him tightly, before I broke the emergency seal on a pair of large medikits stored by the side of the desk.

I put them both onto the desk next to me, and smiled at the pair squinting through the reflective glass, trying to make out what was happening.

The computer was open to me thanks to the access authorization I had locked in earlier, now approved by the local on the floor, and I connected to it. My own RI bridged the gap between the system architecture and my wishes, showing me the paths I needed to take.

In less than ten seconds, just enough time for the fucking idiots before me to notice that they weren’t actually getting the feedback they wanted, I’d removed them from the “guest” list and instead put them in the “ex-employee, security risk” group.

Both turrets reacted immediately.