“That’s it, right there,” Thorne pointed toward a plain-looking warehouse alongside many others in this industrial district.
We drove by slowly in an unmarked car. We then got the camera feed opened up on my optics. The camera panned around the interior of the warehouse.
“Sir, we found the captives in an underground area, modified to be a prison,” a voice spoke from right above the camera.
It then pointed at some shelves, where they found a hidden passageway that led down into a basement. At the bottom was a metal bunker door, the type that opened by spinning the wheel attached.
Immediately upon entering, you could find a spacious area occupied by several desks, neatly lined up to each other. There was a chaotic scene that was laid out before the camera, with blood and bodies scattered around. The equipment seen easily gave away the fact this was a chemical production area of some sort.
“We found fifty kilograms of pure Nectar here and captives further down,” the cameraman informed us.
“What do you want to do with the Nectar, Rollo?” Thorne turned to me and asked.
“Destroy it. That stuff is too addictive and destructive. It’s better off gone.”
“Are you sure? That’s worth millions in credits.”
“Yes. I’d rather no corp come looking for the source of the stuff that is killing their employees. Burn it all.”
“Right.”
The camera continued, going further into the basement, where the cells were.
We soon spotted several other members of our security with a bunch of people in rags beside them. They were all sitting on the ground, huddled together. There were about twenty of them and consisted mostly of women and children, with a few muscular men at the front who protectively shielded their companions.
“These prisoners are malnourished and are on guard against us. What do you wish to do with them?” Thorne asked.
“Just let them go, of course.”
“But they still have slavery chips in them. Others could easily restrain them if they just get released into the city like this.”
Thinking back to the time when I initially met Thorne and Claire. I did have to disable the remote activation linked to their chip before we freed them.
“Then we can bring them back to the clinic to remove those first.”
Charity work…Maybe I should have sold off their drugs or something.
We watched as the former prisoners had to be ushered into our vehicles in separate groups. While they were hesitant, they still obeyed us meekly, likely out of habit.
“Let’s go too. I’ll help out with the surgeries.”
When we got to the clinic and entered the operating room we had reserved for our newcomers, an awkward stand-off was taking place.
“No, we refuse to go through any surgery. You’re not putting any of us under. Who knows what you sick corpos will do to us with your crazy experiments?” One of the muscular men argued with the surgeon assigned to help them.
“We’re here with orders to help you remove those slave chips you have implanted. You can stand by and watch the entire process if you want.”
“No means no. Let us go already if you want to help us.”
“That will just—”
“Enough,” I cleared my throat and declared.
The surgeon and the security in the room turned to address me while the newly freed prisoners quieted down and stared daggers at me.
“You’re in charge, right? Tell us what you want with us. We just want to leave, please let us go.”
“Relax, we’re not here to harm you. We really just want to help you remove the chips in your heads, and then you can be on your way.”
“No way we’re letting you corpos operate on us ever again!”
“Consider it for a moment. You currently have nothing and, frankly, are worth nothing to us. We’re interrupting our business by reserving this room for you guys. We have no reason to harm you.”
“Enough with your talking, you—” The man stopped mid-sentence as one of the women behind him grabbed his arm.
“He’s right. And we really still do have those chips inside us. We don’t have anything valuable to pay for someone else to help us if we leave. Why don’t we take their offer? They did say they are letting us all stand watch as they operated.” She turned her gaze to me, to which I nodded.
The man stared down at his feet and stayed silent. The rest of them exchanged nods and soon, the woman who spoke out stepped forward toward the operating table.
“Allow me to go first.”
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Claire - Halls Corporation
“Madam Claire, where are you going?” Claire turned to see her assistant rushing to catch up.
“I have something to discuss with Rollo. You go finish off those paperwork waiting for me and I’ll check them over after.”
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
“I—”
Opting to continue the conversation no further, she quickly got on the elevator and pushed the button.
She got off and navigated through the hallways until she reached Rollo’s workshop. She knocked, but as she expected, he didn’t respond.
Using her own keycard, she forced the door open and found Rollo entirely absorbed with the car parts that were half disassembled.
“Hello? Earth to Rollo. Please respond.”
It took Claire shaking his shoulders violently to grab his attention away from his work.
“Claire, what do you want? I’m kind of busy right now.”
“We all are, so let’s make it quick. I need you to sign off on a budget for me to hire more people.”
“Sure, send me the file and I’ll sign it.”
He signed it so fast she could tell he only skimmed the numbers without looking at any of the details.
“Oh, if you’re hiring more people, then help me find some for our R&D department,” He continued.
“We have one of those? How come I didn’t know that? Where are they?”
“We don’t…Well, we do, but it’s just me right now. That’s why I need you to hire someone for this car project I have going. I can cover the electrical and software, but we’ll need assistants and someone competent in mechanical engineering and material science, at the very least.”
“Rollo, you know that all the talented people have all been snapped up by corporations or go to their schools originally, right? I can do something about the assistants, but you’ll have to somehow find the cream of the crop that doesn’t have a corpo background for your experts. Even if you do find some, you may have to invest in their training and studies to get them up to standard.”
“Hmm…You deal with the assistants, then. I’ll call up an old friend to see what he can do.”
Always casually sending more work my way…Whatever.
“Hi, Mr. Torres. It’s been a while since we last spoke. I actually wanted to ask you about…” He started talking to the person on the other end of his call.
Having gotten what she had wanted, and seeing how Rollo no longer paid her any attention, she exited the workshop and traveled back to the top floor, where her office was.
Just as she was about to enter her office, she quickly changed her mind and took a few steps to the room a few paces away. She knocked on the glass divider before immediately entering Thorne’s office.
“Hey, Thorne. You busy right now?”
“I can talk. What’s up?” He gave me a brief glance before his focus returned to the terminal in front of him.
“I got my budget approved just now. Do you have anyone suitable for the new department I’m setting up?”
He raised his eyebrow and looked up again, with his full attention this time.
“What did Rollo say?”
“Him? Nothing. He was too busy in his workshop.”
“...Just let him know soon. He usually has some good input on how to go about these things.”
“Yeah, yeah. So anyway, do you have anyone suitable for me?”
“Not really, we’re expanding a lot too right now. But I do know of someone who may be well-suited for what you’re looking for. They’re being transferred from Firebird to here now, since we got someone more suitable for her role there.”
“Are you serious Thorne? I want professionals. Why are you handing me the leftovers?”
“They’re just not suitable for managing the business side at the scale of an entire branch. She should be useful to you as a former mercenary.”
“I’ll be the judge of that. Spit out who it is already and where I can find them. I’ll go see them.”
“Here.” Thorne sent a ping to her SAID with the relevant file.
Claire quickly exited his office and went to find the person in question. They were in one of the office spaces downstairs, in an area that was vacant until recently, as she was a newcomer to this city.
Searching around for a while, she successfully found the correct desk thanks to the projected nameplate, displaying the name Lucy Goodwin. She waited around at the desk for another fifteen minutes until a woman finally approached.
“Lucy, right? I’m Claire.”
“The head of HR…? …How can I help you?”
Lucy’s attempts at hiding her nervousness failed miserably, but Claire continued on for the sake of progressing the conversation.
“How would you like to join the new department I’m forming?”
She stared blankly for a second before wearing a suspicious look.
“For what kind of position?”
“Management. Here, I sent you a file with the key points. Read it while you follow me. We’ve got a lot to do.”
Seeing her eyes had taken on a glow, Claire dragged the woman back to her office.
We’ll have to make do with my room for now until the new department gets its own workspace.
By the time they arrived, Lucy had finished reading over the document, so Claire went straight into explaining their short-term goal and what was to be expected.
“So, you have the overview of the objective listed, but what about the action plan?” Lucy asked.
“That’s what we’ll be discussing now.”
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“Mr. Torres, it is so good to see you again,” I said, as shook the old man’s hand.
“Mr. Halls…You sure have changed quite a bit since you last visited our school. Here is the information you asked for.” He spoke in a much nicer tone than what I had remembered when I came here for my medical license.
“Thanks, I’ll send the credits over now.”
He pinged my SAID with a large file transfer, which I accepted. Within the file were detailed records of all students at his university. It wasn’t just their grades and profiles, it even had recordings of their everyday life throughout the campus.
I guess you could build an accurate profile of someone if you monitored them 24/7. Especially if you ignored the right to their privacy…
“I will go over this and contact you at a later date before I approach any of your students. Thanks, I’ll see you soon.”
“Understood. Please take care.”
There was just too much for me to go through alone. Thankfully, I had people who could support me.
When I returned to the office, I went straight to Claire’s office, so I could drop it off for her and her two cy-sec teachers to deal with it.
“Hey, Claire—” I paused, as I spotted another person in the office with her. She looked really familiar, but I couldn’t put a name to the face right away.
She immediately stood up and saluted, “Sir.”
Someone from the security team?
“You came just at the right time, Rollo. Oh, and this is Lucy. She was managing our Firebird branch until recently.”
Oh…That one I left in charge before I left Firebird.
I hadn’t talked to her since, as Vin usually took care of all the matters between the NLA-Firebird route.
“Hi again, thank you for taking care of our branch there until now. And Claire, what did I come at the perfect time for?”
“We were just about to finalize our plan to set up our own intelligence department and were about to present it to you.”
“When were we setting up an intelligence department? How come I didn’t know about it?”
“You approved the budget earlier, and we were about to consult you on it. Here, take a look at what we’ve come up with so far.”
For the second time in the hour, another large file was pinged to my SAID.