Chapter — 20

Rei kept running for her life, as she had no doubt getting caught would put her life in jeopardy. She didn't know who she was running from or why, but it seemed like whoever they were, WolfMosh had known about them, and Wilma was somehow involved.

There was no frantic scrambling and tripping over her own feet as she ran through the long, two-meter high, and dimly lit corridor, though, all due to [Merciless]. It was the only reason her heavy breathing was steady, and she didn't hyperventilate.

Rei also knew it was the only reason she was still conscious. Without it, like with [Parallel Thoughts #1], she would have never been able to best Wilma.

Wilma's — and perhaps even Mikaela's — part in all of this still made little sense to Rei, like everything that had happened that day, but she forced the speculations out of her mind as she kept running, taking the occasional turn here and there as the corridor changed direction seemingly without reason.

Rei kept scanning her surroundings for nodes in case of hidden defenses, but for whatever reason, there didn't seem to be any, nor any cameras, which boded well. No cameras meant that whoever had infiltrated the Cyber Fangs' local mesh wouldn't get a visual of her, and no security meant that nothing of the sort could be used to hamper her progress.

Well, not any visual they don't already have from my traitor apprentices and whatever cameras exist in the facility.

According to her agent, she'd been running for nearly six minutes with the occasional turns and twists before she reached a dead end, severely out of breath. Rei didn't suspect the path to just end, though, and began to look for a data port or the like along the black metallic walls that barely reflected any of the dim luminance from the crimson spotlights above.

Not finding anything by scanning the mesh using her eyes, she finally found a tiny data port obscured by a flap covering it and plugged herself in. Finding an interface for a password, she once more inserted the data the AI — Silvia — had given her. As the seamlessly hidden metal wall to her right began to slide aside, she almost felt like sighing a breath of relief.

Being trapped while seemingly actively hunted didn't seem like a fun prospect, after all.

As the hidden door slid aside, Rei stepped through cautiously, surprised at what she was met with. It looked to her to be some sort of storage space filled with empty crates and dust. The air was stale, and only a single light source lit the medium-sized room from the center, casting long shadows from the stacked crates to every corner of the room.

Where is this?

As Rei turned, trying to locate any hint of where she was, the hidden door slid shut behind her without a sound. Its exterior was the same concrete-like material as the rest of the room she now stood in, making it blend into the wall without a trace.

Rei spent a few seconds looking for a data port to unlock the door again but found nothing. It may have been hidden even better than it was on the other side or simply didn't exist.

It seems I'm not getting back in there. I don't want to go back, but who knows what lies ahead?

Having left the shielded corridor behind and now connected to the public mesh again, Rei used the map function to get a read on her position. The map every agent had access to was highly detailed due to the sheer interconnectedness that resulted from nearly everything being connected to the mesh. Not everything was publicly available data, of course, but almost every device made by a corporation supplied information to the public mesh — making it a near replica of the physical world.

Rei looked forward to exploring it in the future, but thinking of the mesh brought up another question in her mind:

I connected automatically to the public mesh, as most devices do — including neural links — but how can I be sure that the connection is secure? I connected first inside the Cyber Fang underground facility, meaning that there was a chance that whoever was infiltrating the local mesh there picked up on it.

Now that I've connected to it again, can they somehow track me?

Not knowing the answer wasn't pleasant, and Rei began looking over the map in haste.

I'm apparently in an apartment complex on the lowest level. It's not that far from Cyber Fang HQ, but I should be far enough away that getting mixed up in any fighting is unlikely. How would they even know-

Rei broke the thought off before looking down at the mesh-diving suit, or MDS, which hugged her body like a second skin. A sanguine fang logo sat embossed on her left breast and right shoulder.

If walking around outside in an MDS wasn't conspicuous enough, it's even branded with their logo. Fuck.

There hadn't been time to change her clothes, but getting something else to wear was now a top priority.

Rei used her cyberdeck to forcefully disconnect from the public mesh with her ICE. She'd only been connected for under a minute, but if anyone was actively tracking her through it, they'd already have her location.

Sprinting through the dusty room and casting her fleeting shadow against the wall, Rei had to circumvent several piles of crates before finally finding a door. It looked like an ordinary steel door, and to its right sat what was unmistakably a holo emitter. It didn't seem to be active, though.

Rei approached the door on the outlook for traps of any kind but didn't find any. She then tried pushing the door open, as there wasn't any handle to pull on but was unsuccessful. Not knowing what else to do, she waved her hand before the holo emitter. That at least appeared to work.

A glowing green hologram representing a keypad appeared. It looked to require a four-digit passcode, but she had no idea what it could be.

Rei turned one of her split streams of consciousness toward her cyberdeck and its internal memory, where the data representing the keycard sat. She looked through it with [Data Analytics] for a trace of a four-digit passcode while her remaining attention kept scanning her surroundings for clues.

She found none.

Well, isn't this just great? Am I trapped?

She looked at the holographic keypad before focusing on the holo emitter.

Stupid thought. I'm a Meshmagi; how could I be stumped by this?

After scanning and finding the holo emitter's node, she breached its ICE without difficulty. The lock was clearly not made to keep someone like her out. Splicing the program within wasn't difficult either, and she proceeded to tear it apart meticulously, eventually finding the code responsible for opening the door. Nodding in satisfaction, she put everything back together.

The steel door swung open in her direction as she triggered the specific code section by feeding it the data confirming a correctly inputted four-digit passcode.

Was that lock just lousy, or has my view been skewed?

Rei supposed that it could be a bit of both. It made sense to have a somewhat lousy lock to a storage area seemingly devoid of anything of value. The opposite would just draw attention to the room, something WolfMosh or whoever constructed the secret passageway would not have wanted.

Outside the storage room, a spiraling stairwell went up further than Rei could accurately estimate — even with the clarity given in the poor light due to her cybernetic eyes.

Rei began to run up the stairs, reaching level after level without any doors to exit the stairwell through. She had started panting again when she finally reached one.

This, too, was locked, but the security seemed identical, so she had even less difficulty than last time. She barely needed to stop before the door swung open.

What greeted her was a corridor with door after door on each side and what was unmistakably an elevator right next to the stairwell she'd just vacated.

Rei met the surprised blue cybernetic eyes of an elderly woman who was in the process of exiting her apartment.

"Who are you?" The elderly woman asked, immediately on guard as she stepped back and closed her door until only a decimeter remained open.

"Emelie, part of, um, Farlight Security, here to check up on the complex's security. My team is just upstairs, but I've been going through the stairwell to check every lock. There was a report of a theft on the higher floors, if you haven't heard."

The lie came nearly effortlessly to Rei thanks to [Deception], but seeing the door close another few centimeters as the elderly woman took another step back, Rei realized that even if she'd forced her voice into a semblance of normalcy, her eyes still remained a giveaway that something wasn't right. Something that the elderly woman picked up on as she stared into said eyes.

"Farlight Security? Never heard of it."

Neither have I. How the fuck should I know what security firm keeps this building secure.

"Well, it's no matter, ma'am. We're nearly done. I'm just going to grab some equipment from our van, and then we'll be done in a quarter-hour tops."

Rei started walking away from the elevator, the stairwell, and the elderly woman who remained gazing suspiciously out of her apartment. It was only when the assault rifle began to bump against her back again with the movement that she remembered it.

Should I just have ignored her? I wanted to explain why someone dressed in an MDS would be moving out of an obviously personnel-only stairwell to discourage the woman from searching the public mesh for information on her own out of curiosity or caution. The weapon kind of hindered my lie in that regard.

Rei heard the door click shut behind her but didn't turn, feeling confident that the elderly woman had chosen to remain indoors until Rei was long gone.

I might have just made her more suspicious, though. More people will see me in this get-up anyway, so it's not like it matters. Not to mention that she might not even have cared as anything not directly involving oneself is often ignored as someone else's problem in this day and age.

Rei's mind flashed back to the time she'd chosen her perk and the disregard and callousness the surrounding people had shown toward a stranger being murdered and her corpse casually groped.

The chosen perk had been the correct decision, she felt, but her eyes were a problem. All that said, Rei knew that turning the perk off would be a massive mistake in her present situation.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Moving past door after door, Rei eventually reached what had to be a lobby. It was a bit run down, and litter was even more prevalent than in the corridor she'd just traversed. In a corner near the complex's exit, a man in a rain-soaked cloak stood, violet eyes watching her as he took deep drags on a tiny hand-held device before blowing out clouds of vapor.

He was unkempt and looked like the sort of person Rei wouldn't want to associate with. His eyes kept roaming her figure, but luckily, he didn't approach or speak to her as she passed.

Perhaps the weapon, empty as it may be, came in handy this time.

The glass doors swung open automatically, and Rei stepped into the night's heavy downpour. Her long gray hair immediately got soaked through.

Is it always raining, or have I just gotten unlucky?

She looked around, trying to orient herself with what the map had shown, before spotting an alleyway. There were no shops selling clothes in sight, merely a few stands beneath flimsy-looking roofs selling street food. Many moving bodies stood between her and her target alley, but not wanting to dally, she set to move through the throng.

Unfamiliar with the almost hivemind-like purpose everyone else moved with to not constantly bump into each other, Rei felt herself lean heavily on [Athleticism] and even a tiny bit on the knowledge granted from [Parkour] so as to not disrupt the flow of pedestrians. She felt like a drugged-up fish trying to swim amongst its shoal.

Eventually, though, she reached the much less crowded alley after having moved beneath numerous holographic neon billboards and advertisements refracting through the rain. There were still three people there with her, and Rei briefly glanced in their direction, where they huddled between a couple of reeking dumpsters.

One only partially clothed woman was pleasuring herself while seemingly trying to drink the rain, judging by her tongue licking empty air. One man was twitching amongst the trash, his movements frantic while gibbering about something where 'eyeballs' was a commonly repeated word. The last of the trio — a young boy looking no older than fifteen — was scraping a metallic finger against the wall while giggling.

Fucking crazy people. Addicts, most likely. They don't seem to have a weapon openly visible, though, so they shouldn't be a threat.

Rei was what she believed to be a reasonably powerful Magi, but underestimating the unknown was foolish.

Now, how do I contact Miyo without the risk of being tracked?

Delving into her cyberdeck, Rei looked through the code making up its node. There, she found the crude solution she'd implemented to block herself from automatically connecting to the public mesh, but that wouldn't do. She needed to be able to access it while not giving up data on herself that she didn't expressly want others to have or see.

I need to encrypt all my data, especially the data pertaining to my location.

Rei puzzled over the problem for a minute. [Programming] and her genius-level intellect — by non-augmented human standards — allowed her to construct hypothetical solutions to the problem without actually writing any code to save time.

The issue came down to connections.

Every device connected to the public mesh also gained a loose connection to every other device in their general vicinity, meaning that the distance between them could be used to calculate their overall position. These devices also included other people's neural links, meaning that even if you weren't surrounded by tech — a laughable notion — other people would still give your position away as long as they were connected to something.

Rei needed to make her ICE block every connection to all nodes, no matter how 'loose' they were. It wasn't that hard, all things considered. The only thing that would change was that she would have to manually breach every device she wanted to interface with.

Alright, location problem solved. It means my agent's map function won't work, but I will make due. Next up: general encryption of absolutely everything going to the public mesh.

This was even easier as Rei had spent much of the previous eight months decrypting data and creating her own encryption algorithms. [Data Analytics] helped there, and she soon finished setting up something that would keep her data secure against most programs looking to collect and other people monitoring the mesh.

I'll need to improve on it constantly, as it's still not good enough. It's all I have for now, though.

Then came actually contacting Miyo, and here another issue arose. Rei might have made her data somewhat secure, but Miyo was fully exposed other than the basic security preventing non-Magi from accessing hers. Many corporations still had full access to her data, and many more had partial access — as should come as no surprise.

If I'm a target for some reason, I can't rule out the possibility of Miyo and Ichiro being monitored.

Rei couldn't abide by that, so she started writing a script that would install itself when transferred to give a limited boost to security on whatever agent it was run on. This took longer than her other tasks combined, and Rei soon felt herself getting soaked through the MDS as the rain kept trickling down her neck before slipping inside.

She was starting to shiver.

Those addicts don't seem cold. I mean, the woman's still going at it. A benefit of being so out of it, I suppose.

Finally, she went through her agent, her eyes going silver as she contacted Miyo.

She'd barely rung for a few seconds before her call was answered, and before Miyo could start to speak, Rei slipped her newly written script through the connection. Only a few milliseconds later, it returned a ping with a data packet of information.

Son of a bitch. I knew it.

The script had activated and installed itself correctly and, upon doing so, had also picked up spyware that definitely wasn't included in Miyo's civilian-grade neural link or cybernetic eyes. What was more, the tone — for lack of a better word — of the coding was nearly as familiar to her as her own.

There was even a comment added to it, removing any doubts as to who could have written it:

"Caught me. Apologies - Your master."

As Miyo began to speak, Rei instructed her script to delete the slim yet beautifully written code that allowed WolfMosh to collect whatever data he wished from Miyo.

"Rei! Thank fuck you called! I was so worried! Are you alright? Where are you? I'll come meet you-"

"Hey Miyo," Rei interrupted the unfiltered stream of consciousness Miyo was spewing. "I'm alright, and I've left Cyber Fang HQ. I'm not as far away as I'd like yet, but I'm out of danger. Where are you? And where's Ichiro?"

Miyo breathed a sigh of relief on the other end before trying to expand the voice call to video. Rei, picking up on it through her newly installed script, halted it.

"What? Why isn't it working?"

"My doing. Can't risk it," Rei said tersely. "A video call needs a larger bandwidth as it sends more data, making it more likely we'll get caught."

"Getting caught? What-"

"Please, Miyo. Just trust me," Rei interrupted again, trying to force some pleading into her otherwise emotionless tone.

"A-Alright."

"Now, can you answer? Where are you and Ichiro?"

"Ichiro hasn't picked up yet, so I'm still at home."

Fucking hell.

"Alright, you need to get out of there, but since Ichiro isn't picking up, you'll have to go elsewhere. You've never spoken much of friends other than your coworkers at The Drunken Daemons, but is there someone?"

"Well... Not 'friends' exactly, but I know a few people not associated with them."

"Can you trust them?" Rei asked, knowing full well what kind of 'friends' Miyo was referring to.

"One or two that I've hooked up with more than once, perhaps..."

"That will have to do. Grab whatever you can't live without, just necessities, though, and get going. Call them on the way; we'll find somewhere else if no one is receptive. Perhaps rent a hotel room or-"

"No," Miyo interrupted Rei this time, "I know that at least one of them will accommodate me. Shall I call you once he does to give you the address?"

"Good. No, just send me a text message. I'll meet you there."

"Okay. Should I keep trying to call Ichiro?"

"No. I'll do it. You just focus on getting to where you're going. And while you do, try to limit what you do on the public mesh, and don't tell anyone why you need somewhere to stay. If they ask, just make up a reason. Considering who you'll be asking, I don't see how that could be a problem."

Miyo coughed on the other side, sounding a bit embarrassed, "Don't tease me, Imouto."

"Not teasing. Just do it. And please hurry, Miyo. I'll explain everything once we meet up in person."

Rei cut the call before opening the map in her agent. She couldn't track her current position anymore, but searching for a destination was no issue. She did just that, querying the mesh for a clothing store as near to the position she'd manually inputted as possible. Then, she began to run.

The addicts yelled as she ran past — scattering trash — the woman seemingly in ecstasy while the boy and older man in surprise.

While she moved, she tried contacting Ichiro but got no response.

That is concerning. I'll just have to keep trying.

She did just that.

Rei kept her pace as high as she could sustain as she passed through the alley, another street packed with people, and the next alley after that. It was excellent training for her [Parkour] skill, as many dumpsters, other physical impediments, and erratically moving people blocked her path.

「Notice:

[Parkour] skill level has increased.

Level: 1 → 2」

Finally, she arrived at the downtrodden-looking store, a perfect location to buy some nondescript articles of clothing and get out of her current one.

Rei grabbed underwear, a shirt, a black hoodie, dark utilitarian pants, and shoes. None seemed to be of high quality, but Rei didn't care. The cashier — a young woman who'd been browsing her agent's mesh feeds no doubt when Rei entered — was now staring at the bloody footprints Rei left in her wake as she walked.

I didn't even notice my feet bleeding, but I must have run across all kinds of sharp trash on the way over. I hope the nanites will fix any infections I might otherwise get. Oh, yeah. [Self-Repair] would fix it without the civilian-grade nanites anyway.

The cashier looked spooked while checking out Rei's purchases, not daring to meet her eyes.

Why does a tiny place like this even have human personnel? Surely, a store like this can be automated, right? Or is the risk of theft in these parts too great without human supervision? This stick of a girl doesn't look like she'd be able to squat against anything like that, though.

Having saved up the UBI she'd gotten every month since setting up her cVault with Solbank Inc., she had more than enough credits to pay for the disposable clothes. Rei also pondered buying a backpack to store her mesh-diving suit, as those things were quite valuable, but she ultimately decided against it.

There was a risk that a tracker was installed in it even if Rei couldn't see the purpose of such, and without the necessary external cooling system that the suit hooked up to, it wasn't useful to her. There were less efficient suits that could be used independently of external cooling devices, but hers wasn't one of them.

There wasn't a changing room in the store, but seeing as she and the girl were the only ones there, Rei decided to change into her new clothes on the spot. Well, not on the spot as sweeping her gaze around the store and scanning for nodes, she picked up cameras pointed in her general direction from all over.

Rei moved to a corner before dragging one of the stands holding clothes in front to hide her from the cameras' view. She then stripped out of her sopping-wet MDS with lots of silent cursing and more than a few grunts. It was as if the suit had been glued to her skin due to all the water.

Having gotten it off, she swiftly put on her new clothes while ignoring the half-hearted stammering of the other occupant in the store, saying something about Rei not being allowed to change there. When finished, she pulled the hood over her head to hide her upper face from future cameras.

Realizing her mistake, she looked around for a mask of some kind but settled for a dark blue scarf when nothing of the sort presented itself. Her eyes flashed gold for a second as she transferred what she thought to be well over what the flimsy garment could have cost as a tiny bribe.

"I was never here. You understand?"

The girl looked toward her for a second before her eyes darted to all the cameras.

Feeling stupid that she hadn't already addressed them, Rei breached every camera immediately before following their connections to a server in the back room, where she went about deleting all the footage from the last ten minutes.

"Understand?" Rei repeated a few seconds later, keeping her soulless eyes on the girl. The girl swiftly nodded while seeming a bit confused.

Rei didn't linger and exited, her MDS held beneath one arm. She made her way to a nearby alley where — after glancing around to see that no one was nearby — she located the fullest dumpster and stuffed it well down beneath a heap of garbage.

It made her new clothes stink something fierce, but there was nothing to be done about it.

Rei started to run again, her cold mind coming to the realization that she should have bought a bra to go with the underwear. The thought didn't give her any sense of satisfaction over the fact that it was now necessary but only a tinge of annoyance due to [Merciless] still being in effect.

Not having precise location data, Rei had to manually make estimations on her location as she ran as far away from Cyber Fang HQ as possible. It wasn't that hard with a mind attribute of 11 and a second thread of consciousness to dedicate to it.

"Over there!" A gruff male voice suddenly called to Rei's right as she passed an intersecting alley going through hers.

What the fuck? How?!

She'd been found.