A bit under a week later, I was once again the last to arrive at Oni’s place. Though this time for a good reason. I had pulled the short straw of getting food, so I decided to take the slight detour to the one pizzeria near his neighborhood that used all traditional ingredients, including actual meat and seafood. The Prosciutto di Parma I got on mine will definitely be worth every single euro, even if it was nearly double what Ibex’ Margherita cost.

Leaning back I checked I still had all three of the memory cards I prepared in my pocket. tiny little buggers had an annoying tendency to get lost. And it would be a pain to secure a wireless transfer of all the sensitive data my research had uncovered. And unless one splurged on quantum encryption like Tamamo did for her drone uplinks, you never knew who would be willing to throw resources at decrypting your communications in real time. Especially when it involved very sensitive information about a corporation's security procedures.

Of course none of this would be necessary if Ibex and Oni would finally get themselves a dataport for wired connections. it’s not like it would be hard to integrate it into one of their cybernetic limbs.

I was pulled out of my musings as my car stopped. Surprisingly there’d been an empty parking spot right by Oni’s place. Once it had come to a full stop, I got out and grabbed the self heating box holding the pizzas from the trunk.

“Finally.” Ibex greeted me when she opened the door of the apartment building for me. She must have waited impatiently right behind it, seeing as I had barely made my way to it.

“Someone seems to be hungry.” I said as she raced off towards the elevator, her short pleated skirt just barely protecting her modesty with the rushed movements of her digitigrade legs.

“Mhm. Missed lunch today.” She Mumbled as we stepped into the elevator.

“Broke your legs again?” I asked with a concerned glance towards her faux fur covered cybernetics. If she was starting to make a habit of breaking them it would surely bite us all in the ass sooner or later.

“Not this time.” She shot back defensively. “A demonstration of a cheap upgrade to increase the flexibility of cyberarm joints backfired and messed up the lab I was working in. And Prof. Meier made me fix it all.” She grumbled. “Supposed to teach me something about ensuring enough space for demonstrations or something.”

I decided that pointing out she really could use some lessons in being more careful in general would probably just sour her mood more and thus kept my agreement with the professor to myself. I let her Mumbling about how annoying that waste of time had been wash over me as we made our way into Oni’s apartment.

Inside Tamamo and Oni were already waiting for us, with Tamamo about to prepare some cutlery for the few among us able to eat pizza in a civilized manner. She was even using the sleeves of her Kimono to polish it up a bit, clearly not worried about the immaculate cherry tree branch design on them.

Setting down the box, we quickly sorted out who got what pizza before we all sat down to eat. While we all ate, with some small talk to fill the silence, I gave the information I was about to share one last mental review.

“So.” Tamamo said as she put down her knife and fork and looked over to me. “Why did we meet today? besides the free pizza.”

Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

“Because I finally got enough data that is worth sharing.” Putting down my own cutlery, I handed out the memory cards and waited for everyone to slot them in before continuing.

“Getting into Rhein Energy’s System from the outside is nigh on impossible. But people are idiots.” I began my explanation. “And setting up crawlers to filter through all Social media posts made in the area definitely paid off.”

“What does Social media help us with getting the intel we promised on Rhein?” Ibex grumbled, Eyes flicking back and forth as she looked through the provided data on an AR feed.

“Everything. There’s about a dozen people listing their occupation as HR for Rhein Energy on various dating apps and forums. Over half of them could be verified to do so by cross referencing other Social media posts they made complaining about work in semi-public groups.”

“Semi-public?” Oni inquired as he leaned back in his chair and turned to look at me. When he put his hands behind his head, his black T-shirt seemed to be close to giving out against his bulky cybernetic arms.

“Well technically most social media platforms label them as private. but when the admins have basically no checks on who can join, it really is just a public group with an extra hoop to go through.” I explained. As I continued a smirk spread across my lips. “Of course few people are aware of that, so they start to chat about things they should not. Like the photos in the folder ‘Workplace Rhein’”

“It’s just your average wage slave office space.” Tammamo mumbled as she presumably went through the mentioned images.

“Yes, but there’s one clear detail in all of them. Whenever a workstation is online and pixelated to keep data secure, there’s also an ID badge sticking out of a card reader on that desk.”

“So?” Ibex grumbled. “That doesn’t get us the data if they pixelated it.”

“No. But it tells us how we can get it.” I continued. “It implies their two factor authentication is tied to these badges. And as there are no biometric sensors in any of these images, One can conclude that Rhein is assuming that that is secure enough, probably with passwords.”

“So if we can get a badge, we then just have to crack a basic Password.” Tamamo realized. “So do you need me to get you some off the book quantum computing time?”

“Let’s worry about that once we get the badge data. We should try to copy the data though, rather than steal a badge outright. Less chance of detection and people upping security if there is no badge missing.”

“And how do we go about that?” Ibex inquired with a cock of her head.

“That’s what I got you all together for. If you look at the map in the files, there’s 3 places highlighted. if you open them up there should be more info related to them.”

“So we have a group of 4 that likes to get lunch at the same Italian place everyday. One Cat cafe where a couple likes to meet up for a shared lunch, one of whom is on your list of HR employees. And an arcade one of their staff frequents right after work on thursdays.” Tamamo quickly summarized.

“Hm, the four people would give us more opportunities as they should all have a badge.” Oni suggested.

“No, check the website of the Italian restaurant and their AR walk around.” Ibex countered. “No matter how we try to approach them, two of them would see us approaching. And any potential distraction would draw too much attention from other guests.”

“Indeed.” Tamamo concurred. “Which leaves us with the arcade. unless it is very different from the ones I heard of, it should be loud, have loads of distracting light effects and have people wandering around at all times to blend in with.”

“Well then it seems we’ll head to the arcade sometime soon.” I concluded before checking the time. “But probably not today. I’ll set up a doodle to find a day we can all make it to check the place out, before we try to rob someone in it.”

“Sounds good.” Ibex said as she slid her chair back and got up. “Now then I’ll be going for a drive while there’s still some light out.”

“Have fun.” Oni said with a friendly wave. where as me and Tamamo echoed each other with a “Don’t break your limbs. again”