The packet I sent to them was the one that Bowdoin had sent to me, and as well as the overall layout of the building, it covered some of the security details.
“Boss, that’s not where we’re headed…” Reign was the first to interrupt, seeing the location, and I nodded.
“I know. Don’t worry. Apparently the site is secure, but our hacker friend found this guy”—I pinged out another file to them—“and he’s our ticket in.”
“Okay, what’s the plan?” Reign asked.
“First, we take this guy down…”
“Lethal or non-lethal?” Luna asked, apparently looking at the mug shot of him. “He’s kinda cute, in a dorky way.”
“Non-lethal,” I said quickly. “We need him alive, and apparently not too messed up. Like I said, he’s our ticket in. No clue how or why yet—hacker is working on that, but he’s in the wind at literally any minute. Hence, we need to get there and grab the fucker fast.”
“Right,” Reign agreed, checking the feed from the cab. “Two minutes out, boss. We’ll be landing on the roof. He’s on the sixty-fifth floor. I’m calling the lift now.”
“Nice.” I approved. “Okay, we grab him, as he’s apparently going to get us into…here.” The image I pulled up and sent around was of the target building, and we all paused, assessing it.
“You know, when you said he was in a corpo pleasure place, I definitely didn’t imagine that,” Luna said after a few seconds, and I nodded, totally agreeing with her.
Bowdoin had gotten us the blueprints already, and the damn place was scary. The building itself was fifty stories high, five sided, with five apartments per floor, a goddamn pool area in the middle of each floor, with little swim-up areas leading from the center to each of the apartments. Here and there, little ornamental bridges crossed the swimming areas, and every five floors was an entire floor dedicated to restaurants or entertainment centers.
The place looked like pictures I’d seen of the old world resorts, all palm trees and bright sunlight, beaches covered in golden sand and more.
The few pictures Bowdoin had managed to get of the inside were apparently from some corpo reel, and it showed families laid out on the sand, kids playing in the water, and all that wholesome family shit that was lost to everyone else hundreds of years ago.
I noted that it also showed, between the floors dedicated to various food styles and massages, manicures, and fuck knew what else, two floors that were dedicated to hedonistic pleasures I probably couldn’t even imagine. One was all sultry lighting and beautiful people, with the corpos wearing ornate little masks—presumably so nothing they did could be held against them later—while the other one?
Fuck, the other one was as far from sexy as it could get, all black leather and whips and shit. And the masks there? Not for me. Although I wasn’t bothered about the various kinks most people had—in the army, I’d probably seen all the range—I knew these corpos wouldn’t be satisfied with consensual kinks. Full head helmets were worn in the pictures to make damn sure that nobody could press charges or blackmail the scum that got off on that kind of shit.
Suddenly the comment from Bowdoin about “disposing of the remains of used hookers” made my stomach churn, and I had an urgent need to set off a MADD grenade on that fucking floor.
I pulled back, looking at the overall view of the tower, noting that I’d seen these places before with their enforced “no-fly” zones around them, and assumed that, like so many places, they were corpo research or something, never guessing there was an entire floor there devoted to torture and worse.
Looking at the tower itself, I shook my head at it. It was a good size, not insane, but large enough, five sided, with each of the faces of the tower about a hundred meters on a side. That gave each of the apartments about five hundred square meters, which I was betting was a “small” space for a corpo to relax in.
Fucking scumbags. My entire apartment was less than twenty square meters, and that was including the fucking shower and the bed!
Regardless, that meant that although the outside of the tower looked almost utilitarian, with its reflective plates over the sides to absorb the light, the inside was anything but.
There were also gamma cannons on the roof on each fucking side of the tower, to ensure that no horrible poor people dared to get too close to their betters.
Add to that, the lowest level was surrounded by a perimeter wall with its own security systems that flashed red as I looked at them. The entire building was suddenly blanketed in yellow dots as I switched to the warning sensors.
“Damn,” Reign said in a low voice, clearly seeing the security systems as I was. “Can we actually do this, boss?” she asked, even as the chime sounded to let us know we were landing. “I mean, security at the gates, sensors on the perimeter wall, sensors on the ground, the walls. Hell, you see this section?”
She flicked a file to me, and I checked it as I released my harness, shifting to grab the door release, waiting as the cab dropped the last few meters to the rooftop.
The file had the “guest personal security” tag on it, and I winced as I pulled up the details.
“Wearable security sensors to monitor heart rate, health, and wellness,” I read aloud. “Shit, if he’s wearing one of these, even if we get to him, as soon as I start to ‘chat’ about things, that’s the security office going nuts!”
“That hacker better have a good plan, boss,” Luna said as I opened the door, leading the way around the side of the cab and to the trunk that opened as we approached it.
The rain was finally slackening off, of course, as we’d probably need it to cover our approach or something. So as we grabbed our gear out of the trunk, Luna already running to the lift, Bowdoin called me again.
“Seriously, Kabutt, what the hell are you doing?” he snapped as soon as the connection was accepted. “Did you stop for coffee and a hand job? You don’t get this is the only way—”
“We’re on the roof, getting into the lift now,” I snapped at the little turd, and he let out a long-suffering sigh.
“Dammit, seriously? Fine, time for this to go nuclear.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.
“Look, we need him to stay there, and he’s already called a lift to his floor, all right? He’s sent the start-up sequence to his car, and he’s heading for his coffee machine. That leaves me one option, and I need you to understand that this is a last resort for me.”
“What is?” I asked, as a grainy image appeared in my vision, sent from Bowdoin.
“This is.” He sighed. “Man, messing with someone’s morning coffee is just wrong.”
The image resolved into that of a man hurrying about a small—although much larger and nicer than mine—apartment, tucking a shirt into trousers, waving his arms as he gesticulated wildly about something, then reaching out to a coffee machine on the wall, grabbing a cup as he headed for the apartment door.
The cup was empty, and the figure paused, frowning at the cup, then took a step back, looking at the coffee machine, putting the cup back under the nozzle and jabbing at the buttons.
Nothing happened, and he started to hit the machine, doing a little “why do the gods hate me so” dance, before clearly giving up and heading to the door.
Presumably the machine made a noise, as he jerked around and ran back to it, grabbing another cup—the original having been dislodged when he was hitting the machine—and rammed it into place.
Nothing happened.
Cue more dancing and a few kicks. The guy spun around, and started heading for the door…
The machine spewed liquid into the cup, which was released by the automated grippers—presumably by Bowdoin. The figure frantically tried to get the cup back into place.
By this point, we were rocketing toward his floor, Luna counting them down as we went.
“Four…three…Oh, fucking come on!” she snarled as the lift stopped on the floor above our target’s floor, and a woman got on. She looked to be a typical low-end manager with a short haircut and a sneer set as standard as she looked us all over.
“Idents!” she snapped at Gessh, clicking her fingers.
“What?”
“The security lift is on the other side of the building! Your sort aren’t permitted in these sections! Idents, now!”
“Ma’am…” Reign interrupted, forcing a respectful smile. “Our apologies. We’ve been summoned to a report of a corporate employee being harassed…”
“And why would you be sent? You’re no corporate team!” She sneered. “That’s it, I’m reporting th—urk!”
Luna grabbed her by the throat and closed her fist, at the same time ramming something into her stomach that crackled to life, making her victim hiss and tense up.
“Taser,” Gessh announced casually as the lift moved again. “Hands down the best way to deal with someone like this.”
“Fuck’s sake, Kabutt! You stop for lunch or something…” Bowdoin started up again, and I spoke quickly.
“We’ve got a passenger, Bowdoin. Need to make sure she didn’t send any alerts or anything.”
“A passenger? What? Show me!” he snapped, and I focused, seeing that Luna was still frying her captive.
I winced. “Might want to hold off on that…” I suggested. “That’s got to be doing serious damage by now?”
“Kabutt, as long as the charge is going through her, she can’t send a request for help. Tell her to keep it up until you’ve made damn sure she’s out cold. I’ve seen people wake from stronger charges.” Bowdoin cursed, apparently doing something else. “No security alerts marked for your area. But if she’s mid-level, she’ll have private security cover. Might want to make sure she’s out…you know, soon?”
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Before I could speak, Reign had punched the woman in the side of the head, knocking her out, before grabbing her bag and searching through it as the lift slowed again.
“Here we go!” Reign said cheerfully, lifting up a small cylinder.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Angel dust,” Reign announced, pressing a lever on the side and checking the canister’s contents. “Good shit, no doubt. Give her a good toot on this.”
The doors opened and we all froze, before seeing nobody waiting, and moved quickly. I blocked the doors open as Luna released the taser. Reign helped to pose the woman, laying her slumped on the floor. Before I could ask, she put a similar taser from the woman’s bag into her hand, then the cylinder in her other hand, and gestured for us all to leave the lift.
“Bowdoin, can you…?” I gestured at the lift and the woman, as he watched the event from my eyes.
“Hmmmm?” he asked, then appeared to wake up. “Oh! Yeah, sorry, I’ll erase the lift footage…No, wait, using a vid-generator here…There! Made it look like she walked on, deleted the surveillance feed herself and decided to have a little dust for the trip. She’s done it all herself now.”
“Fuck, that’s scary,” Reign muttered as we backed away. The lift doors closed, and I explained to the others what he’d done. “Just like that, she’s done it to herself…”
“That’s what you set it up to look like?” I said, and she shrugged. “Yeah, but a hacker who’s that fast with that shit? That’s impressive, boss.”
“I’m the best,” Bowdoin said through the link. “That you know of, at least. Now, I don’t want to rush you, but our target is about to fuck off, and you’re not even at the closest lift to his apartment…”
“Fuck!” I snapped, turning and running down the hall. The system picked up on my desire and plastered an arrow on my HUD, as well as a range finder as it counted down the distance.
A dozen lefts and rights flashed past as we ran. Occasional potted plastic plants and benches, and the utter lack of broken lights, passed out or dead gangers, and piss in the hallways made it clear that this was low-level corpo housing as opposed to anywhere the likes of us should be.
“We need to keep him quiet. I don’t know if we need him unconscious or…”
“Get the elf to shake her booty!” Luna suggested, and Reign growled at her, making me grin through my panic.
Thirty seconds later, we took the last left, running past another lift, one that was marked for the parking garage. The door up ahead flashed as our destination, even as it started to open.
The face of a harried, exhausted, and seriously confused man appeared. Coffee stained the left sleeve of his shirt, as behind him I could see the coffee machine spraying jets across the remains of an apartment that looked like a bomb had gone off.
“Uh…” he started, eyes widening, and before I could speak, Reign was.
“Sir, get back inside!” she called.
He frowned, glancing over his shoulder at the mess.
“The coffee, my shower…” he mumbled, and then we were there.
I grabbed him under one arm, Reign the other as we bodily lifted him back inside.
“Hey! You can’t…”
“Assassination attempt,” Reign said quickly. “We’re undercover. Someone’s targeted you, sir. Has anything unusual happened?”
“Yes!” He practically wept, all confusion vanishing from his face, replaced with desperate thanks that he wasn’t going mad. “Yes, all of it!” He gestured behind him, and I paused, looking around the room.
“Okay, sir, I’m going to need you to stay absolutely silent. Do not, I repeat, do not, under any circumstances, send any messages or accept anything, until I tell you to.”
“What’s going on?” he blubbered. “You don’t understand. I’m late! I’m so fucking late! I should be there by now. The boss is gonna fucking frag my ass for this!”
I glanced at Reign and jerked my head at the idiot we’d dumped into a seat, and she talked quickly.
“We’re a specialist undercover security team, sir. You’ve been targeted by someone who’s trying to get into the pleasure complex you work in. They’ve been attempting to hack your implants, but—”
“My implants!” he squawked, hands going to both his head…and his crotch. “Shit, I knew it!” He groaned. “She told me not to go to that chop shop! I should have gone to the company sculptor, not some fucking cheap-ass carver. Oh God, she’s gonna kill me…”
He went off on a tirade about some woman who had convinced him to get his dick augmented, and how she’d ruined everything for him, and everything was her fault.
I snorted, then turned away, reconnecting the call to Bowdoin. “You ready to do whatever?” I asked him under my breath.
“You got him?” he asked.
“Yeah, we’ve got him.” I snorted, looking around the room. Everything from a massage bed to his toothbrush was going mad, and the floor was already a good inch deep in simmering coffee. “Want to turn the coffee machine off?”
“I can reset it,” he assured me. “Is it important, though? I mean…”
“It’s going to flood the apartment, then soak through no doubt, so…”
“So someone will notice. Gotcha. Two minutes,” he replied, distracted for a second before nodding as the coffee machine shut off, then beeped as it started to reboot. “There you go. Plain black, extra sweetener, because you’re clearly not sweet enough.”
I grunted at his little joke as a fresh cup dropped and the machine beeped, before starting to pour again.
“How…how’d you do that?” the target asked, stunned, breaking off from his diatribe against some apparently blameless woman, as he watched me reach out to the coffee machine and snag a cup.
“We have our ways, sir,” I said formally, sipping from the cup and nodding, impressed despite myself. It was actually tasty. “Okay, I’m going to need you to do exactly as we say, sir…”
“But the security at the site—”
“Compromised,” I said. “One of them is the mole, and they’ve marked you as the target. We can’t let them know you know, and that we’re onto them. That’s why we’re dressed like this.”
“Oh…okay?” He licked his lips nervously. “I mean, they say that they can’t be—”
“Which they would,” I agreed, nodding. “Listen, sir, this is how it is. One of them is compromised. There’s a team on their way to kill you, do you understand? All of this was their hacker deliberately making you late. Our hacker is in the system now, which he just demonstrated by making me a coffee. You think a hit squad is going to stop for coffee?”
“Well…no?”
“Exactly,” I continued. “Listen, this is how it is. Either you keep quiet, and we wait here and hope the squad comes. We’ll kill them, and then you can go to work, but you’ll be late—”
“I’m already late! Look, can we—”
“You can’t report in,” I said. “If you do that, they’ll know and they’ll vanish. Then we’ll have to report that you fucked this operation up…You think your boss…” I paused.
“Michaels! Bartholomew Michaels!” he supplied helpfully.
“Exactly. You think he’ll care that you’re late when my boss, who’s a hell of a lot higher, is praising you for helping to catch these fuckers? No.”
“Can’t he just tell my boss it’s okay or whatever?” he tried hesitantly.
“And let the hit team know that we know that they’re coming?” Reign snapped. “Come on, sir, we let them know we’re here, they’ll just vanish, probably come for you when you’re alone.”
“And if you fuck this up, next time, corporate won’t dispatch us, sir. They’ll have us watch and wait, instead of risk you screwing that up again.”
“You know what the survival rate will be if we’re told to hold back?” Reign asked him, speaking before he replied, shaking her head.
“It’s not good,” I agreed. “No need to scare him though, operative. He’s not going to screw this up for us. He’s going to help, isn’t that right?” I sipped from my coffee again.
“Yes?” he whispered, clearly unsure.
“Excellent. I’d hate to have to abandon you here when we know they’re coming for you, after all.”
“What?” he squeaked.
“We’re not going to do that though, not now,” I assured him. “Not now that you’re going to do exactly as we say.”
“Yes, sir!” he agreed, wide-eyed.
“Hacker?” I looked off to one side as I triggered the link to Bowdoin again. “Are we clear?” I asked, acting for the idiot who was watching.
“Clear? Clear as day that he’s an idiot, yeah,” Bowdoin said, my overlay showing me his image as he shook his head in disbelief. “Okay, look, we’re gonna need him to fly us in the front door, but he’s going to need to give me root access to his mods. That way, I can spoof the internal cameras and make his vision match if they remote into him to check.”
“Root access. Got it.”
“You really don’t, do you?” He sighed. “Root access doesn’t mean grasping your damn pocket weasel. Okay, I’m totally doubling my prices for any jobs we do together in the future, for the teachable moments if nothing else.”
“I’ll remember that,” I said, before forcing a smile for the idiot before me. “Sorry, sir, getting advice on the enemy, and their attempts to hack you.”
“They’re trying it right now?”
“Definitely,” I replied, before turning away as I spoke, as though not wanting him to hear it. “If they get control, do we terminate?”
“No!” he squeaked in terror. “No, I’m good!”
“Tell him to accept the ping I’m sending via you. He’s to approve all access, even the sections that he gets warnings about,” Bowdoin said distractedly.
“Okay, sir, I’m relaying a ping from our hacker. The enemy are already past your basic defenses, and if they get full access to your mods, they’ll see us all. That leaves us with two choices. Are you ready?”
“Yeah?” he asked nervously, hunching down even lower in his seat.
“First, they got access, apparently from a repeating link that was installed recently, a physical link that was installed and wet-wired into you, do you understand?”
“N…no…?”
“Really?” I glanced down at his crotch and then back up. “I think you do.”
“Oh…” He covered his face with his hands. “Oh, God, I can’t fucking believe this…”
“So, they’re already in your system. Basic firewalls and security are being breached, and frankly, thanks to your sheer stupidity in allowing yourself to be fooled like this, I’m of the opinion that the best choice we’ve got is to remove their hack at the source.”
“The…” He pointed at his crotch.
“We’ve got no time for surgery here, no time to bring in a carver, or anesthetic, so as I say, we’ve got two choices. First is we remove their physical link to you. We do that here and now—”
“No offense, sir, but I’m not using my personal vibro-blade on that,” Reign said, instead picking up something from his counter that looked as though it’d have difficulty cutting warm butter. “I’d never be able to look at it again. I’ll be using this on you instead.”
“Fuck no!” he half screamed, crossing his legs and contorting to protect his crown jewels. “Please! What the hell is the other option! I want the other option!”
“It’s dangerous…” I growled.
“More dangerous than having my dick cut off?!” He whimpered.
“Dangerous for our team!” I snapped. “My hacker would have to fight them on their own ground, fight them in Aug-World, in the code itself! He could be killed, all because you don’t want to risk your dick!”
“I’ve got credits!” he tried, thinking he’d found a lever, and I snorted.
“You think your credits matter? We’re professionals, son. We earn your annual wage most days! No, there’s only one way that he can do this, and that’s from inside. If he has to waste time attacking your firewalls and security, they’ll see him. They’ll kill him while he’s distracted, and our entire operation is a bust!”
“What do I do!” he begged. “Fuck’s sake! Just tell me!”
“The ping,” I said. “You’ll need to approve him for full access, all the way. It’s the only option here. You give him access, or we remove the link…And even then…” I shook my head.
“Sir, maybe we should leave. They’re going to guess there’s a problem soon. They’ll call off the job—”
“Then they’ll come when we’re not ready.” I nodded. “Good point.”
“What…?” he hissed.
“You think we should just leave them to hack him?” Luna asked, getting in on the fun. “Draw back and take them down when they attack him?”
“Possibly…” I muttered, rubbing at my chin.
“He’d be dead in ten minutes, boss.” Reign shook her head. “Remember, it’s his implants and ident they need. They’ll just kill him and puppet him, like the rest of the specters.”
“Specters?!” he whispered, eyes widening to almost comical levels. “You mean…they’re really…oh my God…”
“I think the best option is the blade,” I said firmly, standing and resting my hand on my handgun. “Sorry, sir, I’d have shot you, and made it fast, and relatively painless, but the noise…”
“He’s accepted it,” Bowdoin told me at the same time as the guy started to frantically babble that he’d done it. “Holy shit, he actually did it, full root access to his Keystone…I can’t believe this monkey’s going to…never mind that.”
“You’ve got it?” I asked Bowdoin, and he nodded, clearly busy elsewhere.
“Yeah. Okay, get moving. Get him to the parking garage. You’ll need to give me access to the vehicle once you’re there. I’ll spoof the camera and his optics to show the same, and then we’re on our way!”
“We still need to discuss that,” I pointed out. “Fucking urgently.”
“Yeah, good point. Look, no offense, but the deal was I get you in, and when you get to the target, I help you hack his shit. I can’t do everything, all right? From here till you reach the target, you’re gonna have to put your big-boy pants on and sort it yourself. You need help? I’ll do my best, but planning it? All my time was spent in getting you this far, and I’ll be erasing signs of you as you move around. That’s literally all I can do, and anybody who is going to look at this afterward is going to notice somebody’s messed with things, all right?”
“Bowdoin—”
“I’m serious! I’m not fucking with you, okay? I—”
“Thank you,” I finished, walking away from our confused corpo prisoner.
“Would if I…Oh.” He paused, then scratched the back of his neck and nodded. “Yeah, no worries. You, uh, you paid for the full service, okay? Friend of Richie’s and all.”
“We’ll head straight for the garage, and as soon as we’re in the vehicle, we’ll work on the next section. Do you need his help still?”
“Well, yeah, I need him to like walk and talk if they call him, and to fly the car, but beyond that? Wait…shit, yeah, get him to take a data cable as well, you know, a physical data access cable? If he can plug in using that to anything with access, we can use him as a walking datalink!”
“Okay.” I turned back to the figure as Bowdoin got back to work. “We’re in, and congratulations, dickhead, you just became an accessory,” I informed him with a grin, searching around and quickly finding a datalink cable in a drawer, tossing it to our target.
“Wha…?” the idiot whimpered.
“You just gave my hacker full root access to your systems. He can not only transfer every cred you have to us, he can puppet you into the garbage disposal after if you piss us off. So here’s where it gets really fun.”