The man was tall, thin, possessed a slight recede in his hairline, and he was older than what his voice suggested. While he fiddled with the sensorium interactive, his thick brows crossed slantedly above squinting eyes.

"Hello. Ms. del Alma-Gris, I'm Kip."

"No fucking way!"

"Yep. There is a way. I know. One year cigarette free, smoke free, and my voice has the depth of a sixteen year old kid."

Salvador nodded towards the man behind the bar as he escorted her towards it.

"I imagine you could use a drink after that ordeal."

She scooched up on to a stool beside where Kip leaned, and glanced around. It was a small bar room with a mere four booths and five tables. Mock redwood paneling made it all the more cozy.

The bartender was the only other person present. A pale fellow with a full head of tight black curls. His handsome mug smiled back at her; his eyes lit up suggestively.

She realized that his hands were on a velvet-lined box that contained her .357 Iconoclastic and her knives. He was merely offering them to her.

"Thank you most kindly, sir. You got a specialty drink you could whip up for me," Tasìa asked.

He raised his chin and waved his palms at her in a proud nod.

"A variation of my own of the Corpse Reviver. I call it the Resucitadór."

She smiled, slyly. Absinthe! In the Quadra, the Great Wyrm was never neutered of its full potency.

The bartender worked up the concoction with whipping motions of his fingers. First the Cointreau, then a splash of lime juice, followed by a pour of Saison Folle Absinthe, another splash of lime juice, and, finally, topped with a Garnacha from Spain.

He took a plastic tooth pick, shaped like a fencing épée and criss-crossed deep into the liquids several times. But before the bartender passed the glass forward to her, he watched it intently until the liquids folded together into a cohesive whole.

He eyed her with large bright pupils and a wolfish grin when she took the drink from him.

So, he was flirting. What was that you said back in Asunción,Tas? We'll limit ourselves to one man per bar scene to show our betters a reasonable level of decorum and social graces?

Tasìa raised a hand to her lips and giggled.

"Gracias!"

She raised an eyebrow at Salvador.

"Carlos Magnus is with me on support. You can trust him. A man of many talents."

"Carlos Magnus?"

"Yes. Another nick. They are all quite whimsical."

"Damn," Tasìa gasped as she tried the drink, "this organization is not at all what I was expecting."

Kip glanced up from the sensorium interactive.

"I'm not sure how I should take that?"

"Sorry. I'm both buzzing and crashing in the same moment. Long. Long. Long day."

Kip sat down beside her, looked her in the eye, and gave her a wan smile. He tapped the sensorium interactive.

"Crashing? A sense of sobriety is likely most apt. Though, please do enjoy your drink."

After a gulp, Tasìa wiped her mouth.

"Shit. What do you have for me there, Kip?"

"I examined it thoroughly for anything that might harm you - our client. And I found plenty. Ms. del Alma-Gris, we are the best in the world at what we do. This is really the only place that achieving containment of what is inside this device is even possible while doing a real-time readout.

"This abomination is designed to fuck with you, to take your head off. The subliminal materials on the inside of it are massive and many layered. However, we have the means to force-step it.

"I would even recommend not engaging it in the kinesthetic chamber but instead flat-screen the visual output and have the vocal interactive read it out in text mode. I'll be there to guide the process if you so desire.

"I have to warn you. Whomever is behind this only wishes you harm."

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Tasìa gulped down the Resucitadór and nodded. She had no desire to be spooked on this venture. Vida Escondida was unlike anywhere else in the Quadra. It wasn't protected by a resonance field like Asunción; instead, the crass materialism of its social matrix was its own form of immunity from the spiritual damage that came with constant contact with the nanospores.

"Kip, your assessment does indeed sounds copacetic to my needs."

He stood up and nodded to the bartender.

"Carlos, hold down the fort. If another client comes through here, send Giselle to manage the case. This may take a solid second."

Tasìa followed him down the two flights of stairs. On the ground level, Grosse Prix Cyber Security appeared to be a modest sized operation. It's facade mirrored the club culture that permeated the main strip. However, there was a world of activity going on in the levels beneath.

What intrigued her even more, now that she recalled the enterprise that inhabited the current spot a mere nine months previously, was that it had been a corner club for a mafia syndicate. Tasìa wanted to ask about the previous residents and what happened to them, even more importantly, if they were behind the current arrangement but Kip was busy explaining how the security firm applied containment to every aspect of their operation.

No communication went out to the broader world. There wasn't even a company-wide intranet on site. Each secure chamber was governed by a self-contained AI. All data was moved about by physical means and that was done only when necessary with security safeguards in place to prevent contamination.

Kip's description reminded Tasìa of what Alisha told her about the Beast's operation in the Sweet. His organization ran exclusively on analog computers, some of which were modernizations of Enigma Machines, others were literal devices used right after WW2 when MI5 went hunting in Argentina.

The retro-technology was put in place to keep his organization secret from the nanospore entities that were ubiquitous as air in the Salvage.

Grosse Point Cyber Security worked from the same premise but, through a very different set of means, they accomplished the same ends.

When she spoke to Leòn three days previously after he mentioned GPCS and he commented that they were the best in their field, he asked her, 'do you know anything about the Functional Programming Paradigm?'

Tasìa shrugged emphatically so he could see her on the cam360.

"I know next to nothing about pure information theory. Just enough applied science to get doo-dads up and running'

León chuckled, "so cute. It's the backbone of GPCS's security model. Perhaps it's best if I explain in person.'

Now, it got her thinking, for she had assumed he merely needed a safe place for them to meet. Had Leòn planned to use the firm's cyber security capabilities for their project of reviving Demona?

Tasìa and Kip reached an office with a closed-off area that the Security Officer called his work station. Tasìa took a moment to admire the machinery. The layout was similar to the workstation that was destroyed in Rubin's van back in Spooktown on the outskirts of Asunción but Kip's set-up was spread wider inside a more ergonomically appealing space.

When she entered the room Kip closed the door. The hum from the larger office complex was shutout completely. She now noticed the squiggly engraved structures on the walls - it was sound proofed.

With fidgety arms, Kip offered her a seat, then popped the sensory interactive into a deck.

Kip hummed as he dickered with his console settings. It occurred to Tasìa that he was nervous.

"Problem?"

His head snapped in her direction with a grin set rigor mortis.

"Is it that obvious" Kip asked.

"Painfully."

As she slowly nodded, he loosened up into a relaxed pose. Tasìa noticed the subtle meditative trick deployed in how he rolled his jawline.

Kip, are you Harvested? Tasìa wondered but she did not vocalize.

He continued.

"I have never seen program structures quite like this. If discretion wasn't our highest priority, at GPSI, I would feel compelled to ask you if you were in the habit of making Tier One enemies?"

Tasìa frowned.

"Well, that is an odd way to avoid asking a question."

She braced her feet up in the swivel chair then continued.

"Kip, are you going to pretend you're not aware of my history?"

He chuckled. His voice raised in pitch even higher than anytime before.

"No, but I'm not privy to all of your, if you don't mind me saying, infamous past."

"Fair enough. That dossier they whipped up for you when I arrived, I assure you that they left out all the best parts."

He nodded along in appeasing agreement as he flipped a switch.

"Here it goes. Are you ready?"

"Lay it on me, brother."

Kip pointed to a small screen above their heads. The screen flashed blue. A message in Indigo whipped across the long curved monitor's glassy surface.

SENSORIUM INTERACTIVE MODE CANNOT BE OVERRIDDEN.

Miffed, Kip yelled, "Reduce you down to machine language, motherfucker. I'll find a way."

Tasìa's eyes lit up.

"My apologies for that sort of language, Ms. del Alma Gris. It wont happen again."

Apologies to her about cussing? His dossier definitely was incomplete. Still, she was aware that the Blonde Cerise cigarettes tended to temper her own language usage and she had been on her best behavior for the entire meeting.

Blonde Cerise for that clean mouth feeling!

"No need to apologize. Are you certain though? How much time would you estimate it is going to take to disassemble and reassemble the program to our liking?"

Kip set back, folded his hands together and expired heavily.

"There are just over three million lines of code packed in the SI. The thing about it though - standard Interactives are built around premise messages. I have never until this very evening encountered one where I couldn't simply extract the premise message and read it off to a client who didn't want to deal with the hassle of a SI session.

"Even when a premise message is encoded it is typically not difficult to find the embedded decoder that necessarily has to be there and work out the message."

"But not this one?" Tasìa shook her head and smiled. She continued.

"All right. I would say time is short, but this is the only lead I have. We kind of have to break it open."

Kip's brow furrowed most curiously.

"Lead?"

"Yep. That dossier should read 'Tasìa del Alma-Gris, former nun, master thief, bike courier, fugitive, spook operative, and' now complete with the added bonus career of 'girl detective.'

"Kip, I'll return to the bar to unwind. I saw a football game that was just about to get started. I don't keep up much with the regular season games but it is no problem for me to get lost up in one. You come fetch me when you have something."

Feeling an urge to drop her professional demeanor as she worried this was getting her no where, Tasìa stood up, turned around, and in her cutest affectation said, "oh, and special thanks to you, my buddy, for the extra due diligence," curtsied gracefully, before she let herself out.

It was going to cost her a small fortune to see this through but Tasìa had small fortunes hidden through-out the Greater Quadra.