“What? Are the assassin’s here for me?” Lla asked while growing panicked.

“They’re here for you. I call them assassins but they are more likely here to kidnap you to use for leverage to get your brother, who is among the leadership of the team, to cooperate in dismantling the attack that is under way at their headquarters. Rivaan has found himself swept along with his preparation in his revenge and theft and is no longer the sole leader of the operation and is instead one of four with the other three being business interests related to competitors of Amdian Synthetics at various levels of abstraction. There are several issues to discuss there, some even relevant locally, but we will talk about those later.” Machand said calmly, even as apparent hostile agents swarmed around the exterior of the street.

“What do you want me to do? Is this you informing me that my time here is up and I need to leave with these agents?” Lla asked quietly. I glanced over at her downcast face.

“I am not your guardian Lla, I haven’t offered you refuge. Mal here is the one who is guarding your door. He decides whether he continues to guard it unless you choose to leave of your own accord, at which point he decides whether the door stays closed.” Marchand said, her eyes flicking to me for a moment before the gazed off into the distance again.

“Mal, I won’t put you in danger for this. You kept me hidden but obviously it didn’t work out, I won’t let you be in actual danger for me. Thank you for giving me somewhere to stay where I wasn’t alone for this little while.” Lla said to me, she got up from the chair.

“Anna, how much have I got to work with here?” I turned from Lla who was trying to earnestly sever herself from my responsibility but I wasn’t without options just yet. I turned to Marchand sharply.

“I offer you nothing Mal, this isn’t my fight and I have no stake in this situation and neither do you outside of a new friendship with Miss Lal. Such a friendship is nice but hardly worth facing certain death for. There are three corporate agents, one to secure their exit, one to secure the package and one to provide support. You could perhaps handle one of them if you had surprise on your side, maybe two under perfect conditions. You have neither.” Marchand said, not even glancing at me.

“You’ll have to reach out to the agents, let me go with your face. Let me talk to them.” I said leaning forward.

“You want to borrow my reputation as you walk beside my agent to talk to a hostile force? No.” Marchand said, unmoving.

“It’s fine Mal. It’s fine really. This is my brother doing, we’ll likely both end up in corpo jail for a while but I’ll be out after a few years.” Lla said from my side.

“I don’t like you walking me along like this Anna, don’t think I don’t see what this is. Those agents were likely stalled by you anyway just for this. You know what though? Fine. Fine. I was on the fence and I didn’t like it but it wasn’t the worst choice, you’ve set me up and I’ll complain for a while yet but you could have done worse, I guess. I give up.” I said, standing up from the chair. I kind of wished it meant more as it only just about brought my eye line to the top Marchand’s head, I needed to get taller.

“Really? I thought you’d thrash around, maybe swear a bit. Maybe try breaking out with Lla first and I’d come swooping in. Now I have to accept you owing me less. You really are an annoying child Mal. An annoying operator. Sharp enough though.” Marchand said, her eyes locking onto mine.

“Well? You’ve got me now and we don’t have all night. What do I have access to?” I asked, letting myself slump.

“What do you mean Mal?” Lla asked in confusion.

“You’ll find one of my staff in the corridor, he’ll be heading out to talk to the guests. You go do whatever you feel is proportional and appropriate dialog. I’ll leave the details to you. Just make sure that you bare in mind the responsibility of the position and the name you carry with you now, you’re not dumb.” Marchand said as she uncrossed her legs and looked at me from her chair. Lla noticed Marchand’s change in atmosphere, it was likely she’d never really seen behind the facade before.

“I can be dumb, I won’t be stupid. I’m not handing Lla over though.” I said, hardening my gaze to appear as serious as I could.

“With your new… career a certain amount of dignity is expected even as small and insignificant as you are right now. Laying claim to an idle hostage is within the realms of understanding but you should consider the backlash it will have on you and now me, I will leave you to handle the process. We’ll consider it your debut before we start the training process in earnest. Don’t cause more problems.” Marchand said, shifting back to her old lady mode.

“I’m not an idle hostage here Mrs Marchand, I don’t want Mal risking himself. This is enough. I’m going to go to them.” Lla said and started to leave. I grabbed her arm.

“Lla, this isn’t about you anymore. This is about the street and Marchand’s pride. The corporate agents have come knocking and now it’s my job to go answer. I’m looking out for you right now and that means Marchand is by proxy, if I let the agents take you then it would look bad for her. So I need to go handle them.” I said calmly.

“Not strictly true, but it does contain elements that are correct.” Marchand said through a squinting look.

“Anna, really? I’m trying to sell something here.” I said, turning back to Marchand.

“If what I’m putting together from what you’ve been saying then your only going down there because you’ve put yourself in the way for me. It’s the same as before. I don’t want you in the way!” Lla said angrily.

“It’s too late Lla. I’ve made my choice now, so I’m going to follow through. That means you’re not going with them, we can discuss what else happens when they are gone.” I said and swept past her and out into the apartment.

Lla made to follow but felt Marchand’s fingers on her arm. As I closed the door to the parlor I heard it lock immediately as Lla looked at Marchand in surprise.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

Walking through the apartment and out into the corridor I found a tall plain looking man wearing corpo style slacks and shoes but a turtle neck vest with his cyberarms on display from the shoulder, steel throughout with gold filigree.

His faceplate was very high quality with the only sign of it being cyberware being a set of golden studs at his temples. He had black hair but it was cut short and business style which was at odds with the golden stud earrings, even as he saw me he smiled which showed me he had gold canines.

“Hello Mal. Glad to have you on the team, shall we go? My name is Stefen Leclerc, I’ll be the face today unless you want to take point?” He asked.

“You can lead the way, if they start to get out of hand I’ll step in. Shouldn’t be too much of a situation. Nice to meet you by the way.” I said, they were here for a simple hostage. They’d find the hostage unavailable and leave. Hopefully Marchand’s reputation would be enough to dissuade them.

Stepping out onto the balcony walkway I looked out to the entrance of the street and saw a single figure in the darkness near the corner which my eyesight quickly adjusted and resolved into a sleek corpo style borg with flat bar style legs. I didn’t spot the other agents but I assumed this was the face of their little operation.

Following Stefen over to the lifting platform and stepping onto it with him we quickly descended down to the street level and stepped out in the empty roadway. We were the only visible figures on the street but that wasn’t unusual, the street was usually empty at the street level with the most visible traffic being on the balconies or people smoking over the railings and even then the numbers were single digits. Marchand no doubt had any monitoring agents kept under strict orders to stay out of sight.

Stafen took point into the middle of the road as we walked towards the end of the street and stopped a good way back from the entrance as we both stood in the light, the agent standing in the shadows of the corners. He straightened up and walked out in front of us casually with his hands in full view at his sides. I covertly looked around for his chooms but couldn’t see them around, they must be taking cover.

It was at this point my netrunning interface popped up with a connection request from “MAR” which was the first time I’d seen a actual netrunning connection request, usually I just talked to them over comms like I did with the jobs I’d done recently. This connection was through my netrunning cyberware and was much more interlinked, I’d get a lot more data from the netrunner and also open myself up to them a lot more.

I accepted and watched the connections be requested and accepted for different layers of my interface and once it was all completed my interface was filled with local data from number of known hostiles, their locations in red silhouettes and out of sight markers at the edges of my view along with suspected current activity and basic health status,

Focusing on the agent in front of me I saw him marked as “Agent1” and listed as idle and healthy with a subtle red outline instead of a solid silhouette. The other two agents were silhouetted a good way away in different directions with one of them listed as idle and the other as aiming, likely a sniper.

Stefen glanced at me out of the corner of his eyes as the agent settled into his position in front of us and I nodded a little.

“You are a representative of the interests of a certain synthetics corporation, I assume? My name is Stefen and I am a representative of Mrs. Marchand, the local fixer of this neighborhood. What business do you have to discuss?” Stefen asked with a surgical politeness.

The agent quickly glanced at me who just saw a street kid arms with a few light guns with his arms hanging at his sides. Nothing of note. He seemed unsure of my purpose and instead focused on Stefen.

“I am here to secure an asset, this is your employers territory and I don’t wish to impugn on the hospitality of local brokers. How much will it cost to gain entry to carry out a short collection operation?” The agent asked with an obviously synthetic voice, likely very synthetic to allow for a wider range of volumes. Useful in dangerous situations and battles.

“You’ll have to have your man stand down if you wish to engage in a diplomatic approach. As for the cost that would be determined based on your goal. Who is it you wish to acquire? If it’s physical goods then I assume you would simply have sent a mail request.” Stefen asked with his arms behind his back.

The agent had a barely perceptible frown for a moment but then muttered something under his breath and the agent listed as aiming at the right of my view changed to idle.

“We are here to secure a young woman named Lla Lal. We have confirmed this as her current location, what is the price to complete our operation in the area?” The agent asked after a short moment.

“Ah. I’m afraid that will not be possible. Lla Lal has already been claimed by another party and is unable to be made available for collection. Is there anything else you wish to discuss?” Stefen said smoothly.

The agent looked a little annoyed for a moment before his eyes unfocused as I assume he checked his interface. After a few moments he refocused on Stefen.

“Is there no room for negotiation? We are willing to offer renumeration on top of whatever area operation fee you apply to smooth over any previous arrangements. As long as it this can be cleared up in short order there is even a bonus available for you personally, Mr. Stefen.” The agent said with a neutral tone. I noticed the tiny changes in posture that told the story of someone readying themselves for action, but not enough of a shift to warrant immediate action on my part.

“I’m, afraid the other party was quite insistent on the current arrangement.” Stefen said tightening his posture but I could tell from the tiny movements inside his exposed cyberarm mechanicals that he was readying some some sort of response.

“Could we purchase the identity of the interested part at least? We understand there are certain expectation privacy, of course, but seeking an arrangement with the third party could bring this to a suitable end.” The agent asked, clearly losing some of the politeness from his robotic speech.

“That would be outside my purview of authority. I’ll defer to Mrs. Marchand’s hand for that particular point.” Stefen said as he let one of his arm loosen free and gestured at me.

“You have a lot of interest in this package. The answer is no.” I said, trying to appear casual and unintimidated as I could as a kid in front a borg with overwatch.

“You? Your Mrs Marchand’s current hand? No disrespect meant but this seems somewhat insulting to my superior to have to haggle with a child.” The agent said through a slightly clenched jaw.

“No disrespect taken. It’s a recent appointment, hence my age. You need not take insult from any haggling, there won’t be any. The answer is no.” I said as I looked right at the agents zoom focused cybereyes, inhuman cyberware was a soldier focused market. You needed to be able to fade into a crowd more as an operator.

“No, you won’t tell us the identity of the third party? That is quite a disservice.” The agent said coldly as he zoomed in on me. Flat out turning down attempts to find out information unrelated to third parties was usually an insult in such situation unless it was an attempt to point out the scale of the third party as a warning, which we hadn’t set up through our speech which really only left one option, insult.

“I wouldn’t think of insulting your superior or their corporation without reason. I will tell you the identity of the third party of course, it’s me. I’m the third party. As the third party, I said that you may not have the package. I’ve claimed it already and I’m not open to negotiation.” I said. I noticed a small wince from Stefen, whether it was from my dramatics or from opening myself up to confrontation directly I didn’t know.

As the for the agent, his eyebrows rose is a little surprise that I’d admit such. Then his eyes glanced at something on his interface before his zoomed in, camera-like eyes zoomed out and locked back onto my face with a small smile at the corner of his mouth pulling for a moment.