A quiet night. No problems, no last second changes of plan and no knife in the back. After his success in Atlantis, Sam had expected that one of the usual catastrophes would befall him. But now it was 12:30 the next day and he was sitting in his Cybermancer chair, connected to his system that the Aizutachi had provided him.

He scrolled through VidFeeds and meme nets while arguing with himself about whether he was lucky for once, or whether the disaster came later and twice as bad. Both sides had good arguments and Sam didn't come to any conclusion. But that wasn't a problem, he thought, because while he was lying in his chair, at a strange angle, he could use the inner dialogue and the vids as a distraction to write codes for future daemons as if in a trance.

Cybermancers who had good equipment and were exceptionally talented were able to "dive" into cyberspace. Deep Diving. Instead of sitting in front of the screen of his cyberdeck, Sam floated in an empty room of blackness with windows open that he could interact with directly. Sam was able to monitor several programs at the same time, because he simply created a copy of himself when something became too much for him.

It cost a lot of energy and overheated even good implants very quickly, which is why he only used cyberspace in this way if he had access to a Cybermancer chair with cooling and a data cable that could withstand a lot of energy and was also cooled.

At the moment, in addition to two VidFeeds, he had three programs and a diagnostic tool floating in a 360° environment, with two copies of himself. The original Sam stared intently at the window in front of him and worked on reworking one of his older daemons so that it could break into the Aizutachi's net as a kind of sniffer dog. It wasn't the first time Sam had made a digital attack on his... Employer... had tried. Both times before he was caught, the first time he was stopped and betrayed by a powerful protective wall and the Net's internal ICE, the second time he had a small battle with his superior 'MoRa' and had caught a migraine, straight from hell. Sara wasn't that familiar with him at the time and wanted to show him that he wasn't good enough to see him as a threat, because she had given him his current cybermancing chair the next day and only pointed out that the ICE was impenetrable here.

To his displeasure, Sam had to admit that she was right, the entire defense system was impressive. But if an army with a battering ram can't get in, then maybe a mouse through a crack.

Its daemon was so small and insignificant that it could be considered a glorified ping. A kind of access point for Sam so that he can connect faster to the points assigned to him in the Aizutachi Net. This was quite common among all those who worked with mobile cyberdecks. But his sniffer dog was more than just a ping, if not much. He would systematically work his way through the net and look for information and send it drop by drop to his mobile deck so as not to attract attention.

He was proud of his creation, even if it wasn't quite finished yet. "Mhm, what do I call you?" his voice didn't come out of his avatar's mouth, but just sounded out of nowhere. "How about Sepperl? There's something, hehe"

Sepperl would take about two more days, one if he could work through the rest of the day. From then on, he would slowly but surely learn more about the gang and possibly free himself from their clutches.

"-wake up, HEY!"

"SAM!"

Sam was torn out of his cyberspace by a blow to the stomach. Breathing heavily, he gasped, "What?" and looked up. Sara stood right next to his chair with her fist raised and had the fire of a hundred forest fires in her.

Ah Fuck.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

Sam took quite a while to recover, Sara had a much stronger punch than you would expect from such a petite person. And Sam hadn't been prepared for it and hadn't tensed his muscles. He had with difficulty prevented himself from vomiting directly at Sara's feet.

"Just a little moment..." Sam took several deep breaths and tried to consolidate his voice, with little success: "I- urhg, what's wrong, Sara?" "Did you look at the attachment in my message yesterday?" Ah. Dung. There was something.

"Only briefly, I was a little distracted by the daemon inside. But I do it directly. I had already seen yesterday that I can probably make the system in Digital Grave think that I am one of the approved candidates. Sam opened the file and realized that it was more than just a powerful daemon. Hundreds of smaller ones were packed in such a way that they would erupt like a flood as soon as they made contact with the ICE. It was so much more impressive than he had assumed.

"The daemon is a gem, eh?" Sara said with a broad grin. Seeing her like that was almost scarier than having her angry in front of you. It had something of a predator.

"Eh, yes. The smaller ones too, especially how they are packed. It's madness." "I'll take that as a compliment, thank you" "You? Oooh. Wow really?" Sara's grin fell in a split second and her usual, annoyed, facial expression was back, much better, Sam thought to himself. That's really impressive. Did you do it alone?" "The main daemon, yes, but for everything else, I worked with my 3-person team. But you can kiss my boots later, now business." Sam's eyes widened in anticipation, "Digital Graves? Is it already that far?"

"Almost. You will arrive there next week Monday at 5:30 with the other newcomers. But we have to make you look like a soldier first.""Soldier?" "You are taken into a prototype project that prepares you for something together with specialized equipment. That's all we know. But you can't show up there and" she looked down at him, he was wearing his favorite shirt and his slouchy pants. "Not like that. You look like a techie who never leaves his cyberdeck." "Well, I am in a way," Sam grinned.

He only received an eye roll, "You will get decent clothes in our armory and we will take you to our internal Augementer. Get cyberware that looks more military. Don't worry, you'll keep all your stuff."

"I... I'm not quite sure how to react to that." He didn't want useless implants, because a person could only tolerate limited Augs and he wanted to have cybermancing implants installed later in his life.

"Simple. You're not going to have an opinion on it and you're just going to do what I say, or I'll fry you here and now. YOU are the reason why we are both in this situation right now. Don't forget that."

She was right. His damned curiosity had led him to the Corp hideout and-

Sam must have clearly exposed the guilt, because Sara now said, softer: "I won't hold it against you, but we have to work together to get out of this. So please, just do what I say." Sam needed a few moments before he could answer: "yes, ok." a sympathetic slight smile briefly crossed Sara's face and Sam added: "And I'm really sorry that you have to answer for this." Before he could continue talking, Sara slapped him on the shoulder and pushed him towards the door. "Don't waste time on the past, but do your best in the now to improve the future. That's what my instructor always said. Come on, off you go, choose clothes"

At the end of a very long day, Sam was back in his Cybermancing chair, but this time without using the stationary Cyberdeck. He used the cooling to recover his body from the surgeries.

The Augmenter had built in his knuckles made of sturdy Plasteel, reinforced forearms and artificial back and shoulder muscles with light armor. His back in particular still hurt, despite all the painkillers he was given. But Sam couldn't deny that he looked much more like a warrior with his shimmering black and gray shoulders. He would get other lenses for his eyes so that they looked more like a big cat or something, Sam would at least look dangerous until he really had to fight. But Sara had assured him that it was not expected of him, but that knowledge of weapons technology and how to use it was primarily assumed.

Now he still had five days to recover, experiment with his new body and finish Sepperl.

He wished it was right away, because then he could at least get it over with right away. The five days turned out to be much worse than expected. He had been able to do everything except the recovery on the first day and sat around the rest and fought his panic that he would soon climb into the den of lions, with a fat steak in his hand.

Then it occurred to him that the disaster that did not appear will probably choose a REALLY bad moment to appear after all.