Drew - Halls Corporation
“Your company better compensate me for this. I can’t believe you guys have the audacity to sell defective products. Did your colleagues embezzle the funds meant for quality assurance or what?” The red-haired mercenary raged.
“I understand your frustrations. Can I—”
“What do you corpo dogs know? I say the only thing is how to wag your tail at your bosses and exploiting everyone else!”
“Can I please examine the product you have been using?”
“Here, take it. I already uninstalled your junk. You better give me a full refund.” The woman threw the bag right at Drew’s face.
“Please allow us some time to investigate. If it is our fault, we will surely compensate you fairly.”
Having caught the bag, Drew wasted no time and immediately scanned the cybernetic within. As usual, he scanned it for the product code and compared it to their internal database. It only took a brief moment before it returned with a match.
“May I ask where you got our product from?”
“Tssch, what’s with all the questions?”
“Please, if you would—”
“If you must know, from old man Klon’s clinic!”
“Understood, thank you. I will refund you the full price now. Once our investigations finish, we may compensate you further if deemed justified.”
“Yeah, yeah. As if you corpos will hand out free money. I’m done with your company from now on!”
The female merc brushed Drew aside and exited the private booth, leaving Drew there scratching his cheeks.
He checked his schedule in his SAID and began going to his next appointment.
The next morning, his coworker, Derek, dropped onto the seat next to him without hesitation. Drew was surprised to see him again, seeing there were numerous other stores they could order breakfast from, with a low chance of picking the same one twice in a row.
“Why the long face? Clients again?” He asked, seeing Drew staring at him with a blank face.
“Hmm…Yeah. Except this time, they were in the right. It was my first time dealing with someone with a legitimate claim, and I’m on investigation duty now because of it.”
“You too? I heard Oakley got the same thing.”
“Well, I guess I’ll go speak to him, then. I’m going to get a head start. Take your time.”
After refueling a cup of coffee, Drew headed straight for his office and began digging around on his terminal. He wanted to go over the incident report of Oakley’s case before meeting with him. He soon found the correct report and went through it, comparing it to his own.
“Hmm…”
Once he was done, he sent the man in question a quick ping and walked straight to his office that was only a dozen or so steps away from his. The door automatically opened as soon as he knocked.
“Drew, it’s been a while. I heard you got a similar case, too?”
“Right, but mine got their Argus from another clinic. I was hoping we’d still stay in touch as we head out to investigate, though.”
“Sure, we’ll open a file and treat this as a potential related incident. You should be able to see my logs in real-time.”
The two men got to work, and they worked efficiently. They left before most of their coworkers even clocked in, heading out into the city.
Drew got out of his car and sent it off to the nearest lot with the auto drive function while he scanned the neighborhood. It wasn’t the best place around, with various adult entertainment establishments that catered to the more economical clients compared to the Neon District.
However, it was places like these where certain QGs thrived, which naturally attracted like-minded mercenaries to the area as well.
The streets were still fairly quiet, which was normal for this hour of the morning. Only the occasional drunks and people stumbling back home from their night out. Drew paid them no mind and had his SAID display the route to his destination.
A yellow arrow materialized in his view, tracing a path for him to follow.
It guided him into a building that stood thirty stories tall. It was one of the few around here that wasn’t a low-rise or a gigantic megabuilding. Inside the lobby, various signs were clearly displayed beside the elevator, informing visitors of the businesses on each floor.
He pressed the button for the eighth floor and the doors closed and, much to Drew’s dread, old-fashioned elevator music began playing. As much as he wanted to mute all noise, he knew it would be a stupid idea to do so in the middle of field work.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
He impatiently rushed past the door when it opened, only to find himself in the middle of a clinic’s waiting area. There was no one there except for the young man with bright green hair who was snoring away behind the counter.
Drew quickly commanded his Argus to scan the floor while he walked up to the reception desk. The young man on the other side of it showed no signs of rousing, sleeping without a single care, so Drew went ahead and tapped his finger on the table.
Receiving no reaction, Drew proceeded to increase the intensity and speed of his tapping until he gave up and slammed a hand on the desk.
The man with bright green hair instantly flinched, scanning his surroundings in a panic.
“Old man, I was just resting my eyes!”
His eyes darted around the place and calmed down when he noticed it was only Drew standing before him.
“Erm…Are you a client? Don’t think you made a reservation, though.”
“Can you check if Dr. Klon is available?” Drew asked, despite knowing the answer.
“Give me a second,” the man said and stood up from his chair and headed into the back.
He hadn’t fully closed the door behind him and Drew could pick up on the sound of them muttering. The conversation didn’t last long enough for Drew to fine-tune his auditory implant to listen in on them, and the young man returned.
“The old man’s resting. Why don’t you make an appointment for later today?”
“I’m only planning on asking him a few questions. It’ll be quick.”
“Sorry, he’s a stubborn old fossil, he’ll—”
“Here, take this for your troubles.” Drew slapped down some credits on the desk.
The young man alternated glances at Drew, the money, and the backroom before he nodded.
“Go ahead. Can’t guarantee he’ll be in the mood to talk, though.”
Drew smiled and walked through the door the young man had returned from. He could hear the sound of some metal tinkering noise and he soon saw a tiny old man working on a cybernetic arm.
“What do you want now, Mosshead? I thought I told you to beat it until evening.” The man replied without trying to hide his irritation or looking up from his work.
“Apologies. I wanted to ask you some questions.”
The old man’s hand stilled before he slowly turned around.
“Fucking unreliable kid.” The man cursed as he shook his head. “I don’t know who you are, but this clinic is closed until the sun sets.”
“I’m not here for your services. I want to see if you recognize this person here?” Drew quickly took out his handheld terminal and showed the old man a picture of the client who had brought him the defective Argus.
The old man scoffed and resumed working on the cybernetic arm before him.
“I see a lot of people every day. Can’t say I would recognize any of them or tell you about it, anyway.”
“Fine, but how about the Argus you had installed into her? Did you source that through official channels and did you tinker with it?”
“I’m sure you mighty corpos would be able to easily look into that. And I only customized my wares based on client’s requests.”
Seeing how the soft approach wasn’t working, Drew swiftly tried out the hard one.
“You know, you should speak up before you get dragged into something where you don’t belong. Since you’re so wise and old, you should know what happens to people who go against the interest of corporations.”
“Try it. I don’t care. Otherwise, leave me alone if you’re not going to do anything about it.”
Drew tried digging out some info on the old man to use as leverage against him, but quickly found nothing of use. He was an old and stubborn man without any living relatives.
Seeing how he was making no headways, Drew shook his head and took on a tactical retreat for now to rethink his approach.
I hope Oakley is having better luck.
----------------------------------------
“...We’re still looking into it, but there have been rumors going around saying we’ve been selling defective products.”
“What do we know so far?”
“It’s only two separate incidents, but upon closer examination, the same malfunction happened in both cases.”
The same parts malfunctioning…Could there be a problem with our production?
“Did you take a look at our QA department?”
“Yes, but they haven’t found any—”
“I understand.” I held up a hand to cut him short. “I’ll go take a look immediately.”
So there goes my plan to work on the AI. As the foremost expert on our products, there are some responsibilities that I can’t just escape from.
Vin went on about each incident in more detail before I descended onto the production floor. We had set up a quality assurance department in the corner of the floor, in between the production area and storage.
There were several workers who were carefully examining each piece before them, utilizing nanomachines to view the parts closely, following the procedures we had set precisely. After seeing they were doing a good job, I stopped paying the workers any heed and picked up one of the products and began running a thorough myself.
One of our main challenges when creating a new product had been to create a production method that produced the least amount of defects, even when our workers were unfamiliar with the processes. However we tried to address the problem, we still couldn’t stop the dozens of defects from appearing each month. Still, it was strange that we hadn’t detected two products with the same defect in such a close timeframe, so I closely examined the faulty part in question.
Even after bringing several samples into my lab and dissecting them, I still couldn’t figure out any new clues. All the samples I had brought still appeared much like how it was supposed to be, with no particular vulnerability.
Could it be something that only happens when operating in specific environments? Both incidents didn’t have a detailed description of the environment when the malfunction occurred, though. I doubt the merc would answer nicely either about any details that happened on a gig.
I spent some time deliberating on different methods I could get the mercenaries in question to talk, whether it be by money or force, but it wouldn’t be a good look if the word got out. The last thing I needed was allegations about bribing or threatening clients to come to light. The corporations who were against us surely wouldn’t miss the opportunity to disparage us.
With that in mind, I resumed examining the specimens before me in hopes of finding new clues. I only stopped examining the freshly assembled Argus when Kiri alerted me to a priority call.
There weren’t any details besides it came from Flo, but it was enough for me to instantly put aside my work and answer.
“What’s up, Flo?”
“I need to take some time off…And can I borrow some money?”
“What? Why? Did something happen?”
“Erza has missed three of our check-ins already. I’m going to Lion City to find her.”