The idiot—Kal Trentini—was only too happy to help, once he understood that we were going to pay a visit to the pleasure site, then fuck off as silently as possible. Apparently his position in the catering section meant he got to deal with corpos all day long, and as the complaints manager, he was both slightly more trusted than the average—which was why Bowdoin had picked him—and slightly dumber than the average potato.

Well, “happy” was a description that fit only compared to the state he was in when he found out that we had full control over all his systems and could literally do anything from send ourselves every credit he had, and run up huge debts at insane rates, to sending pictures he’d taken and stored of himself naked—apparently they were from his “dating profile”—to the head of the corporation he worked for.

That was the fun bits, I explained, because the other part, was that as our hacker was already in the corpo retreat’s systems, using Kal’s ident, so if we got caught? He was as guilty as we were, given that he’d willingly given us root access.

So his best chance? To help us get in and out, and cover our tracks.

Now, fifteen minutes later, we were listening to Kal practically screaming blue murder at some security operative at the main entrance over a secure link. That he was so late for his shift had prompted a security call, and we were braced, ready for a firefight, as they threatened to check the van using high-powered scanners.

They’d see through anything that Bowdoin could do, and at best we’d be left shooting our way out. Most likely, they’d use the gamma cannons on us, and we’d all be toast.

“Listen! You fucking use those scanners on me and my van and you fuck me over? I’ll make it goddamn clear why I was late was because you’re fucking incompetent! You’ve remoted in—you’ve seen there’s fuck all in my van but me. You searched it yesterday, for the love of blood and chrome! If you make me even later than I already am? I’ll get fired. I get fired? I’ve got nothing to fucking lose! I’ll make sure you go down with me, so help me, you goddamn mother fucking piece of…!!!!!!”

We waited a moment.

“Oh, right, well…yeah, thank you, you too!” he snapped.

I let out a long breath as Reign stifled a fit of the giggles over the stress as we started to move again.

“Fuck that was close,” I muttered, shaking my head. We’d spent the very limited time we had on the way over here examining the situation from every angle, and we’d come up with two solutions.

First, and definitely not the way we wanted to do it, was that we landed, and then went in on brass balls. Essentially, we march in and brazen it out to the suite we needed with Tyrannus, bluff and distract all the way, shoot any fucker who got in the way, the full works.

Option two, while far less insane, I liked even less.

It was me. Alone, making use of the stealth suit we’d looted, the one with a nearly depleted goddamn battery. We’d gotten another of them as well when we’d compared our loot on the way over, thankfully. We’d ended up having to bodge things together to cover the gunshot wound in one’s back, and the slice across the chest of the other that had killed its owner.

But, after some seriously last-minute work with some glue that’d probably never last, we were ready.

Basically, the best plan we had was that we use our friendly little idiot to get us all into the maintenance section and get admin access to the systems, then we head for the security office, and we put me in the system. I dress in their uniform, march through the place—on my fucking lonesome—and my team basically hide in the security office while I do it, giving Bowdoin access to the security systems.

Then I do everything, and they essentially watch me, probably while eating popcorn, before setting off the alarms in the farthest section of the site, and we all fuck off quietly. No muss, no fuss.

We all knew what we were going to do, but I hated every goddamn second of it as he landed, despising how everything that I was doing was so last second.

I was used to the army’s way of doing things. Ten planning meetings by senior officers, all tugging each other off. Then the congealed mess of their plans would be given to us as NCOs, and we’d spend a few days hosing them down and burning anything they’d touched, before redoing the entire thing so it made sense.

Then, and only then, once all the plans were properly made, would we present them back to the officers, pat them on the head and tell them they’d done a good job.

They’d look over the notes, and the plan, and most of them would know that they were nothing like what they’d put together. They’d keep their goddamn mouths shut, though, and they’d accept that the plan now worked.

The dumber among them, usually also the highest ranks, would nod and claim credit, not knowing any different, and the job got done.

It took a little while, but at least everything was planned properly.

The other side to that was when we were given last-minute objectives like “take that building.”

Then NCOs did what we did best, and liked least—besides dealing with officers, of course—as we improvised all the livelong day.

Since I’d gotten out of the fucking army, I felt like that was all I’d done: racing from one disaster to another, constantly firefighting.

When I flexed my left arm, though, and considered my credit account? It seemed to be working out okay so far actually, despite every goddamn instinct.

We landed, and Kal banged on the side of his van, moving slowly along it as he went, before opening the door and peering in at us.

“Are you ready?” he asked.

“Fucking of course we are!” I hissed back. “What the hell was the banging for?”

“Oh…Well, anyway. So the sensors here are every few meters in the lower areas. Can your hacker…” He paused, then looked to me as Bowdoin clearly asked him a question, answering, then waiting. Ten seconds or so later, and Bowdoin was on with me.

“Okay, Kabutt, good news, bad news time.”

“Bad news first,” I said instinctively.

“We’re now inside the perimeter, and I’ve got access to a lot more of the system. There’s a shift change on the site. Looks like security is swapping over, so there’s more around than we hoped. I’d suggest you leave the others in the van until we’ve got control of the security office. If you take it by stealth? You can probably do it alone. Still, if you try to take it by force, as it is now? No fucking chance.”

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

“Shit. Fine. Okay, great. What’s the good news?”

“I lied.”

“About there being load of security?” I sagged with relief. “You utter bastard. I’ll get you for…”

“No, I lied about the good news, bad news thing. There’s no good news.”

“Bowdoin…” I growled.

“Also, they’ve brought in security turrets since the copy of the plans I managed to get. If they see you? You’re fucked. And honestly, I don’t see that stealth suit lasting till you get to them.”

“When the hell did you find that out?”

“On the flight over here. I’ve got Kal’s access, so I’ve been going over the recordings of the site when he’s been wandering around. Let me tell you, Kabutt, he’s a fucking pervert. I mean, yeah, I can be a bit of a perv at times, but this guy? Nope, total different league.”

“Fine,” I growled, before turning to the others. “There’s a security shift change going on, lots of people in and out. Best if you all stay here. I’ll send a message when the route is clear.”

“Think you can make it all the way to maintenance and then security?” Reign asked, and I checked the battery on the suit.

Seven percent.

“No, I guess not,” I growled, looking around the parking garage for inspiration.

“There’s spare clothes in the locker room, if that helps?” Kal suggested diffidently, and I fixed on him.

“How far and where?” I asked.

“The next floor down,” he said quickly. “We’re on sub-three, the third level below ground. This is the better parking one. There’s a smaller space on sub-five as well. The security forces sectioned off sub-six through ten, and we were warned that if we go anywhere near it, we’d be shot, no warning.”

“What’s above us?” I asked, not trusting the maps we’d gotten now we knew there’d been changes. “Sub-one and two?”

“Sub-one is for the corpo parking, like the higher ranks and customers, and sub-two is maintenance and security.”

“Maintenance, that’s where we need to be.”

“Really? But that’s just where all the bots and stuff goes, and the maintenance types do, you know, whatever they do.”

“You’re just a font of knowledge, you know that?” I said grimly. “Okay, get me to the locker room below us. I’ll swipe some clothing, then we can check the maintenance area. Maybe they’ll have a compatible battery I can use as well.”

I’d already taken most of my gear off in the small van, quickly stripping down to my plain black under armoring, glad that I was wearing that at least; then I’d redressed in the stealth suit. I’d also stashed my hurricane revolver into one of the pockets of the suit, long narrow things that were sealed up.

It was a last resort, as me holding a goddamn gun when in the suit was a blatant giveaway; it’d not be covered by it, and would instead be floating along. I also had the vibro-blade strapped to the inside of my right wrist instead of to my chest.

I felt naked—and not in a good way—as the girls wished me luck. Reign smacked my ass as I stoop-walked past her out of the back of the transport, triggering the suit just before I stepped out.

“So,” Kal whispered after a few seconds, as the pair of us walked across the parking garage, with Bowdoin apparently using every trick in the book to hide me from local systems as my stealth suit flickered and lagged.

“Yeah?”

“Ummmm, this job you’re doing?”

“Yeah?”

“Does it pay well?” he asked after another brief pause.

“What?”

“You think I want to be in catering?” he asked me suddenly. “No, okay? I really don’t! I have to put up with people telling me all day that their food isn’t right, or their bed was lumpy, or that the cleaner they fucking ordered beaten black and blue yesterday for interrupting them? Well, surprise, surprise, that cleaner didn’t go to their room today and they need their sheets changing or they’ve ran out of lube and they need a new jar, but only lingonberry flavor will do…”

He paused, shaking his head, and I realized that as furious as he was? He wasn’t actually furious at us, the people who were risking his life. He was furious at the corpos, despite being a low-level one of those fuckers.

I nodded to him. “Yeah, it fucking does.”

“How much?”

“How much do you earn?”

“A hundred thousand a year,” he said, and I looked at him in shock. “I know, I know, it’s a shitty wage but…”

I tuned out the rest of what he was saying, stunned.

A hundred thousand credits a year.

I’d earned half that as an elite operator in the army. I’d sacrificed half of everything I earned to paying off the suit. And even if I’d not done that, I’d not have fucking earned that much in a year, and I was an elite frontline fighter risking my life every goddamn day.

That some asshole who stood there, letting corpo dickheads complain about shit to them all day earned more than me? I buried the indignation and moved on. Yeah, he earned more; of course he did. He was a corpo himself, and the fucker had to deal with corpos all day and not shoot them in the face. That had to be harder than I could believe. I’d barely been around this guy half an hour or so, and I desperately wanted to shoot him, never mind the others.

We trooped down a set of stairs, him pointing out that, first of all, the lifts were all security controlled, and second, they were always on the go, meaning that we were likely to bump into someone if we used them.

It was quicker to use the stairs.

They were old-school, narrow steel steps, guaranteed to do a number on bare feet if anyone was ever dumb enough to try walking on them without shoes. I shrugged, not really interested as Kal started on about the reason that the head office preferred some dickhead over him for the better shifts.

I occasionally interjected with a “uh-huh” and even more rarely “shame that,” and it seemed to keep him happy until we reached the next floor, then passed along a corridor to the service staff section of the lockers.

“There’s security team gear down here?” I asked after a few seconds, catching a random word in the dross he was spouting, and he nodded.

“Yeah, did I not say? This entire section is theirs, but, you know, there’s a shift change going on, so there’s going to be people in there?”

“Bowdoin?” I said, the hacker having left a line open to me.

“Yeah?” He popped back up in my vision and blinked.

“Were you having a fucking nap?” I hissed, and he grinned.

“No, just relaxing. You know how boring that fucker is. So, what’s up?”

“Are there security staff in the lockers?”

“Two minutes.” He checked something, then clearly asked Kal something, as he got him to move closer and plug in the direct data access cable from his Key to a port in the wall.

“Time’s important here, Bowdoin!” I snarled after a few minutes, flattening myself against the wall as people passed by the bottom of the corridor we stood in.

“Patience is a virtue,” he replied, unconcerned, still fucking around with something.

“I swear, I’m going to get a fucking ulcer working with you,” I growled, before being cut off as he came back.

“Okay, yeah, three people in the locker area. Two finishing their shift, one starting. Two cameras…I can loop them though, and…done!”

“Anyone we can use?” I asked.

“The guy who’s starting is big enough, maybe. If you can take him and the others down without raising an alarm, then you can stash their bodies somewhere…Garbage chute!” He said that last bit with a laugh.

“What?” I hissed.

“Garbage chute. On the far side of the lockers, there’s a chute. Leads down to the sixth floor. It’s a laundry room, closed off since they started doing whatever below.”

“Will they survive?” I asked.

“When you’re the one attacking? Probably not.” He laughed again. “Yeah, no worries there. Looks like people have been using the laundry chute to sneakily dump anything they don’t want to deal with. There’s like a mountain of filthy clothes down there. All the shit-stained sheets and so on are being chucked down there as well, so yeah, a soft-ish landing!”

“Perfect place for corpo-sec then,” I agreed. “Okay, give me a heads-up view of the room, and pop the door when I say.”

“Sending!”

A new link opened in my vision; Bowdoin’s image reduced to a tiny block as I mentally reorganized my HUD. I shifted the new one to the top right and studied it for a minute, seeing the helpful tag that Bowdoin had attached with “you are here” at the top.

The locker room ahead of me was roughly square, slightly narrower at the top and bottom, with doors at the center south position, and the showers taking up the middle of the room.

Lockers stood along the outer wall, tall and narrow, with changing rooms on the inner wall, ringing the shower section. I gritted my teeth, seeing the two at the bottom left, joking and flirting. Their body language suggested a recently begun relationship, judging from the fact that they both wore a towel around the waist and nothing more, and them being a man and a woman in rather close proximity.

They glanced over at the guy undressing slowly in the middle of the left section, going as slow as possible as he got ready for his shift.

I couldn’t tell whether that was because he was trying to get a better look at the admittedly impressive tits of the female security, or whether I was totally misjudging it and he was just desperate not to start his shift.

Either way, it was time to play the game.

“Pop the door,” I ordered.