Part Three: The Candidate

Present Day.

The revelation was followed by a massive rush of blood to her brain.

Tasìa briefly lost feeling in her shins and feet, and she stumbled backwards. Francesco Sala caught her and helped slide her back into the booth.

"Easy my friend," he coaxed. "Quite a blowout even for Zona Lobos. More port?"

Tasìa shook her head.

"Thank you. But no. I just realized a few things," she bit softly into her lower lip before she continued, "not only am I in the middle of a most dangerous game where I am getting out played on every move, but -."

She stopped to think, and she recalled a device she once built with help of Elise's tech, Bruges, for a heist that served to incubate a delayed reaction.

Chicco's eyes were fixed on her and he barely breathed.

"Yes. Please continue," he said.

Her breath rushed up on her as Tasia spoke.

"Chicco! You have to reach Kip. Tell him to isolate that sensorium interactive from everything else. It has to be put in a Faraday box that can withstand a very high KSI."

Francesco frowned as he reached for the phone and dialed. As it wrung, he asked her, "what's the problem?"

"I have a suspicion why all the analytics for that sensorium are coming out so weird. I believe it likely to be made of fingunt, and designed to massively data breach your enterprise by bursting a nano-cloud within the server sector."

Francesco muttered "shit" beneath his breath. "Kip is not answering." He blinked slowly as she tensed up. There was alarm in his eyes. "I'll check on him. But I need you to stay put."

"Chicco! You need me," she pleaded. What could she do in here? She suddenly felt cooped up in the barroom where just a few minutes before she was having a really good time.

As he patted her forearms, sympathetically, he shook his head, firmly.

"I'm afraid protocol demands it. You are now a contested party in a data breach."

With a glum scowl on her mug, Tasìa sunk back.

As he rushed away from her, Francesco made a call to security to meet him at a coded alphabet named sector which she assumed to be where Kip's workstation and the servers were located.

The door that lead into the operations sector closed and locked with a pneumatic hiss behind him.

She was alone in the barroom and Tasìa did not feel she could wait out the emergency with sports programming and booze. Significant events were occuring around her, she was beginning to feel claustrophobic.

Recognizing her compromised emotional state for what was, Tasìa calmed down and did a site evaluation. There were two exits, no realistic access to the air circulation ducts as the vents above her were too narrow to exploit.

The door that lead back to the security chamber and her car was more promising than the hydraulic security system that controlled the door to the opposite side. It's locking mechanisms were simple mechanical devices she could manipulate with the electromagnet in her boot heel, and the simple pick tools she kept in a holster fold.

Promising as well were the potential sector connects through shafts and alternative doors Tasìa noted as she passed by on her way up to the barroom when she entered the premises.

She squatted in front of the door to inspect the device more closely.

The lock mechanism was not tumbler based but utilized instead a lockbox where pins were connected to offset one another.

Tasìa pressed her fingers against the side of the lock and tapped. The echo was too feint to make out distinct chamber size gradients but a tap with a gold coin would produce clearer chimes.

Once the size and shape of the internal scheme was determined by the echo, it was only a matter of using the electromagnet to center align the thin connector rods so the switch would be unobstructed from turning the cylinder that was being held in place.

Chicco's voice rattled her as it burst through the intercom.

"Tasìa, mio bell'amica, please don't compromise the security of that door. The stairwell on the other side is a soft spot entrance hub so it is heavily guarded by lethal drones and turrets."

She rose back up.

"Sorry, Chicco."

"S'alright. If anyone makes it through there you have my permission to blast away at him with your .357. He won't be one of ours."

"Are there enemies in the facility?"

"I'm afraid we have traced movement but it has been highly allusive so far."

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Damn. Elise's creep team were first tier experts in cameotic evasion. It had to be them and she lead them here!

"Hey, Chicco! It has to be Elise Luna Claro and her team, but what would interest her in this place?"

Sala respectfully guffawed. "Do you recall that story you asked me to tell you that kind of got interrupted?"

"Of course."

Sala cleared his throat.

"I will give you the quick, dirty and short version."

Klaxons blared out in a swell of sound. She could not hear over the dismal cacophony.

Tasìa barely had noticed the red horn in the corner above the top liquor shelf earlier.

She brought the .357 'Clastic out of its holster and emptied the entire cylinder of six chambered rounds into it.

On an emotional level, it was quite satisfying in establishing some semblance of agency that was being denied her.

"Tasìa, was that necessary?"

Ah, shit. She was so use to living outside the bounds of tactful and conventional behavior it did not occur to her that she shouldn't shoot it.

As she popped the ejector rod Tasìa made up a lie on the spot.

"I have a hearing condition that can cause paralysis when continuous high pitched racket occurs. I felt the swoosh in my inner ear that starts rolling whenever that happens."

There was a brief pause.

"I will make sure there is no charge back due to medical emergency."

The lie she told did make her throat feel dry and thirsty. Tasìa eyed the liquor shelves and her Son Délice Sauvage.

"Chicco? You still have time for that story of what went down when the family went to the mats?"

Went to the mats. Old gangland term for when a power struggle broke out between rivals and it was necessary to assume a defensive position. Gangsters took shifts watching each other's backs in rooms with sleeping mats laid on them.

Now, it still meant taking a defensive position but not such a literal one.

No answer came forth. The klaxons she could still faintly hear coming from other sectors died out.

"Chicco," Tasìa called out.

No answer. From the entrance side stairwell she heard a sizzling noise like a gaggle of firework sparklers.

Shit. She knew what that meant as she ducked behind the bar counter. An EMP was about to go off.

The imploding 'boof!' sound snared through her stomach. There were at least four of them that went off in near sync. The closest being the nearby stairwell. A cascade of falling mini-drones hit the steps and bounced down them.

The room was plunged into darkness. She tried the Katy Lied IR shades but as she assumed they were drained of electricity.

Tasìa scowled. EMPs were highly unfair in her estimation but she, at least, could take solace that the creep team would be in the dark as well and she had the advantage of the Modality when she needed it to heighten her perception.

With the .357 Clastic held firmly Tasìa began her meditation by separating out the strands of sound she heard. There were thirteen of them.

The most odd was the ceiling fan above which no longer had a power source. She concentrated on the sound and Tasìa amazed herself as she could hear even the distinct chime of the ball bearings.

Muffled boots!

They edged up the stairwell followed by another slower set still in the corridor beneath it.

She evoked the Modality. Vapor whisked at her nose. She could now faintly see through a silver haze that was a visual projection of all her senses.

Tasìa dashed out of the bar cubby with a high leap, flicked out a Liberty coin from her belt, snap threw it from her fingers at the door lock guard.

Tasìa read the set of chimes echoing from the internal chambers. This time she had a different strategy.

She aimed for the four tensor plates and dislodged them from the assembly. With a kick against the mechanism, Tasìa yanked the remaining cylinder back and released the door.

The creep team operative was a mere four steps down the flight of stairs. The man - she did not recognize on catching sight of his eyes, brows, and forehead - was startled on sight of her.

She only had the revolver and her knives on her but there was a way to keep it non-lethal. Tasìa emptied three rounds centered on the sternum of the battle gear breast plate. She ducked back behind the door.

The operative got off a tri-burst before he fell down the steps onto the landing tread where he smashed his back into a set of metal balusters.

The chemical scent of tranq emmitted where the operative's rounds smacked the door. This was a non-lethal operation.

"Goya," Andulus Caza called out from the stairs further down. "Wellness check."

"I'm alright. Nothing broken according to my readout."

"Come back down to me."

Tasìa kept low.

"Hey Caza," she called out. "How is it you are powered up?"

"Sup, Tasìa? Pretty much figured that was you coming at us that fast. To answer your curiosity, our boots are embedded with kinetic converters."

She cursed lightly, almost comically.

"That Elise. Thinks up every possible contingency doesn't she?"

"Hey it makes it easier on me. I'm just a simple action man. Tasìa, if you stand down, I'll even throw you your keys, and a kinetic charger for your battery. What do you say?"

Tasìa's face tensed up.

"You are not here for me?"

"Nah, some nasty piece of work named Salvador who runs the operation."

It had to be another Salvador and not Kip. He wasn't the mastermind type.

"You used me so you could run a breach," she said with grit in her voice.

"That we did, but, hey, no hard feelings, okay? Good thing you didn't use the sensory interactive. There was no way it would get approval here for customer use. We had to put some real evil shit in it so the techs would take it close enough to the servers where we could release the nanites"

Caza continued to speak but his tone changed.

"Tasìa, as a favor to me, okay? The quicker we get this done the more likely we can keep this op casualty free."

She cleared her throat; the Modality left a drip in the back of it. The only remnant still active was her continued low light vision.

"Got a few questions needing resolution. What the fuck about those explosives in my HybrClydis?"

"That wasn't us, Tasìa. I heard about the incident at Zona Lobos, but we have no idea. If you agree to come down, I will have the new girl do a deep dive."

He meant Felicité Paz. Tasìa had many questions about that one but it wasn't her highest priority.

"One last thing I need to know Andu, what about Leòn?"

Caza sighed.

"Forget about Ballano. He's been shipped to Ciudad del Este to face a magistrate."

How was she going to do this job without Ballano? CdE was on the other side of Paraguay.

"Alright. This is not my fight. I'm putting the gun away. I'll meet you at the next landing."

Caza came up first. Goya had a slight limp and his armor was damaged from a four centimeter deep scoop and chest wide crack. She nodded to him.

"New guy?"

"Yeah. New Gallo Puntero for a second creep team. Still officially in training."

Tasìa stopped and looked down at her feet before she accepted the key set.

"Hey, Andu. Sorry about Birddog."

Caza stepped in and gave her a hug.

"It wasn't your fault. Still, it rips me to my soul. Elise feels the same. It was your guy Sachmilli that tipped her that my sister works for those bastards."

Tasìa's brows wrinkled in bafflement.

"How did he know?"

Caza chortled, uproariously.

"Elise is not on speaking terms with him so you'll have to ask him. We suspect the crows discovered something on recon. You know how clever those birds are."

She smiled with a gobliny grin. At the moment, Tasìa wasn't holding even her capture against Andulus. At that point with all the shit that went down, what choice did anyone have but play it out to the bitter end?

No one came back from the Klínica Kompleta heist unscathed.

"Don't be a stranger, Andu. Buy me a drink sometime."

Tasìa hugged him again before she strolled down the steps.