Good People (Worm/Shadowrun)

Recompile - 6.04

I wasn't fast, wasn't fit, but the bathroom was cramped, the corridor was worse and my legs were long. Speed didn't matter when you only had to take two steps and when your bones were closer to stone than calcium those steps carried the force of a freight train.

My head was dropped, my horns thrust forward in deference to some ancient instinct buried deep in my genes, where they'd laid hidden for the millennia between the Fourth World and the Sixth. That instinct's thematic opposite was already curled into a fist; my cybernetic arm drawn back to drive a solid mass of alloys and polymers into whatever was left un-gored.

The demon didn't make a sound in response, didn't even look fazed as I charged. I had half a second to take in her arrogant posture – her arms and her head tilted slightly in a gesture of naked contempt – before her legs folded beneath her as she dropped into a squat. Above the waist, her body was as still as a statue, even as she swept her leg out in a kick that should have been impossible in a corridor that narrow.

It connected with my left ankle an instant before my foot made contact with the floor, twisting it just enough that I stumbled and fell. The momentum of my own charge, coupled with my unbalanced run, drove me forwards into the wall in a pile of limbs. I barely managed to shift my weight enough to take the blow on my unaugmented shoulder, rather than getting my horns stuck in my bedroom wall.

Pain radiated through my body from the point of impact, even passing down the length of my cybernetic arm as a sympathetic phantom. Below me, I glimpsed the ninja through blurred eyes as she rolled out of the way of my collapsing body, finally uncrossing her arms as she pressed off the carpet and somehow twisted her body up into a cartwheel that put her on her feet again.

My own ascent felt slow and ponderous, but as I pressed a hand against the wall and pulled myself to my full height I found some of my confidence returning to me. It was another little biological trick; there would always be a feeling of power that came from looking down on someone two feet shorter than you. It helped drive the animal panic from my brain; helped me think this through like the Shadowrunner I was supposed to be.

The demon wasn't fazed, of course. She leant against the wall, her hand resting on her hip as she looked up at me.

"C'mon, deckhead," she drawled, her voice distorted a little by her mask. "I need to vent some anger and your lanky ass is the perfect punching bag."

"You screwed up," I snarled, as I took a lumbering half-step towards her. Some drool had leaked past my right tusk, knocked out of my mouth when I'd slammed up against the wall. I reached up and wiped it away with my cybernetic. It came away blue; I'd caught a whisker with the motion. "You think you're in control? Think you can just jander in here and fuck with me!?"

All at once, I cut every light in the apartment and wacked every speaker up to full, broadcasting a blare of staticky noise that blew out the systems in three appliances not meant to handle anything more intensive than a gentle beep. I was already running, watching the heat-blob in front of me as it flinched for just a moment, baffled by the sudden absence of light and outpouring of noise. This time my run was steadier, my arms outstretched in front of me.

My hands made contact with her waist, digging into the material of her taksuit as I squeezed the sparse flesh and taut musculature beneath. Idly I was reminded of snakeskin; the surface of the suit was patterned with almost indistinct hexagons. It was nothing more than an afterthought; the sum focus of my mind rested on the forward motion of my legs as I flung myself forward, lifting the ninja bodily off her feet only to slam her back into the ground as I toppled onto her.

Moving on instinct, I drew my fist back and drove it forward with the noiseless momentum of artificial joints and tightly-woven bands of synthetic muscles. I was aiming for her face, ready to knock the false teeth out of her mask's mocking grin, but she somehow managed to see the blow coming, twisting her head just far enough out of the way that my fist was instead driven futilely into the floor, where it cracked the boards and let out a mechanical squeal in protest.

At the very instant my fist made contact, I let our an involuntary wheezing gasp as the air was driven out of me. I bent double, my head dropping enough to see her heat blob of a hand withdrawing three fingers from my gut. It felt like I'd been shot.

The next blow to hit me came from a clenched fist driven into my side with enough force to roll me off her and onto my back, panting and wheezing as I glared up at the ceiling. She was tall enough that I suspected she was an ork, but she still hit far harder than she had any right to.

She's an Adept, I realised. The thought almost passed through my mind without comment; whether her punches were imbued with magic was irrelevant next to the fact that they fucking hurt.

I flicked the light back on, filling the heat-blob of her shape with colour. She was standing over me, her hands back on her hips as she leaned down to meet my eyes with the black void of her lenses.

"Now that you know where you stand," she said, stepping one leg over me and sinking down until we were almost eye to eye, "you're gonna answer my question."

I tried to rise, but my core felt like it was on fire and a swift jab to the shoulder had my head bouncing back off the carpeted floor. With her other hand, the adept reached for a long pouch on her belt, unbuckling it to reveal the head of a wicked-looking metal and polymer tomahawk. The sight of it was enough to draw out some last reserve of adrenaline.

I sprang into action, my arms sweeping up to grip the adept by the shoulders even as I found enough strength to throw my head forwards, driving a horn into her mask with the crunch of cracking ceramic. She reeled back, reflexively driving a punch into my brow that knocked the wind out of me, my grip on her shoulders immediately falling slack as the world span.

I staggered to my feet, grabbing the side of the couch to haul myself up as I watched her blurred shape reach up and remove her mask, letting it dangle down her back along with the hood it was attached to. I couldn't really see her face, just a blob of dark skin and the vaguest impression of a loose bun of hair.

Then she kicked me, lifting her leg impossibly high to plant her boot directly on my sternum. It was enough to send me reeling back into the couch, and to topple the couch itself so that I rolled over and back onto the floor in a tangle of limbs, bashing my hip against the side of the coffee table. The adept closed on me, her tomahawk drawn.

"Where the fuck is Brian!?"

"B… Brian?" I wheezed through the pain and the shock. "Brian!?"

Wherever the conversation would have gone from there, it ceased in an instant as the room was suddenly bathed in an eldritch light, the colour of a lighthouse reflecting off fog. The glow coalesced in the centre of the living room, right between furious adept and sprawling technomancer, taking shape first as a vaguely-feminine form before more and more details began to materialise.

"Lisa?" I stammered through the pounding of my skull, as the full details of the… apparition became clearer. Lisa's astral form wore the same trenchcoat as she did in the real world, but beneath it her body was adorned with shamanic sigils and carried a tattoo-like image snake slithering over her skin.

She flashed me a wink, then turned to look at the adept – whose grip on her tomahawk had only tightened.

"Hey, Aisha," she drawled. The name was like a shot to the head. Brian's sister. "Long time no see."

"You've never seen me before!" the adept – Aisha – shouted back. "Don't think you can fucking scare me, either! I know how astral projection works; you can't touch me, you see-through bitch!"

"No, Bitch is the cyborg," Lisa retorted with a predatory smirk. "I'm Tattletale, and she's Spider as of a few hours ago. But seriously, all that time you spent watching us and you never guessed I might watch you back? I keep track of all my friends' sisters."

She moved closer to Aisha, drifting up slightly so that she was looking down at the ork.

"Good thing there's only one, huh? Makes it easy. How is life in that little anarcho-punk commune of yours, anyway?"

Something in Aisha snapped. She snarled, her arm moving faster than I could see as she flung her tomahawk at Lisa, the blade passing through her incorporeal body before embedding itself in my wall. My head had begun to clear; I could see naked grief spread across Aisha's face as her mask shattered. She looked like she'd been crying.

"Okay…" Lisa's tone was uncertain; that clearly wasn't the response she'd expected. "Guess I touched a nerve."

"Where… the fuck… is my brother!" Aisha ground out the words, her voice low and dangerous. Her hand was drifting towards her gun. "He hasn't been home in three days!"

"…which means you've been at his place for three days," Lisa said, her voice a lot more muted. "What happened?"

"He's in the hospital," I jumped in; Aisha looked like she was about to see if she could throttle a ghost, and I knew it was a small leap from that to shooting the only soft target in the room. "He was seriously wounded on our last mission, they're operating on him now. He'll be okay, but it'll be a few days before he's out." Some of my anger crept back into my tone. "Why the fuck couldn't you just ask me that?"

"Fuck…" Aisha sighed, completely ignoring my last question as her shoulders slumped and she seemed to grow visibly tired. "Explains why you're sporting a new arm, I guess. Fucking bastard."

"Excuse me?" I asked, though from the look Lisa gave me it seemed I'd stepped on a landmine.

"Who the fuck does he think he is!?" she shouted back at me. "What kind of asshole gets shot for a living but acts like he's a fucking wageslave with an eight to six counting beans!? Where the fuck does he get off telling me to come to his place if I'm in trouble?!" She beat against her chest to emphasise the point, her anger morphing into dismay.

"Aisha," Lisa began, much more softly. "What happened?"

"Who shot him?" she snapped at me.

"The Chosen," I answered. Aisha's face twisted into a scowl. One of her fists was clenched so tightly I thought she was going to tear the glove of her suit.

"Those skinhead cocksuckers…" Something seemed to shift in the way she was looking at us. I wondered if we'd just jumped across to the other side of a line in her estimation. "You too, huh? Whole lynch mob of them burned down my 'anarcho-punk commune,' you smart-mouthed pixie." The last word was directed at Tattletale, who took it in her stride.

I sighed. "So you went to Brian's place because he has a spare room for you only for him not to show. But why ambush me?"

"The rest of your crew lives together. They're a harder target."

"But why ambush me at all?"

"Huh?"

"Never mind," I said, shaking my head. "Where's my gun?"

"Under the fridge. Trick for hiding things from a troll is to go as low as possible."

"Of course…" I trudged over to the fridge, getting down on my hands and knees as I struggled to get my arm low enough to fit into the narrow gap between the fridge and the floor.

"So that's what he sees in you," I heard from behind me. I blushed, once again glad that grey skin didn't colour. My fingers brushed against the trigger of my Executioner, before I managed to get enough of a grip to pull it back out.

"Fuck off," I snapped, half-heartedly, as I staggered to my feet and set the gun down on the kitchen countertop. I'd been deliberately avoiding thinking about Brian like that since before the last job. At first it was because I didn't want any distractions going in, but since everything went South I'd been avoiding thinking about it at all. I couldn't even be sure he'd still be interested after such a traumatic event, or even if he'd really been interested in the first place.

"Your brother's in the CrashCart hospital," I said, as a way of changing the subject.

"Shadowrunning pay that much, huh?" she asked, taking the bait. I had a feeling the best way to deal with Brian's sister would be to keep a stock of conversational shiny objects on hand to distract her.

"We're moving up in the world, but this came from a deal," I explained. Lisa looked at me like I'd already said to much, but I was starting to have an idea. "You look like you're doing well for yourself too; that stealth suit can't have been cheap."

Aisha snorted. "Burned most of my savings on it, then the Chosen burned the rest."

"You snuck in here alright," Lisa said, her tone contemplative. I think she'd realised what I was going for.

"Taking candy from a baby," Aisha countered with a dismissive wave of her hand. "I climbed up to your balcony just to make it interesting."

"We're on the thirteenth floor."

"And?" she asked, with a shit-eating grin on her face. "What, you scared of heights?" She stepped in close, making a point of craning her neck to look up at me. "You didn't seem the type."

I was about to snap back a response, but Aisha abruptly stepped back from me and, very deliberately, fell backwards onto my armchair, ending up with her hands behind her back and her feet kicked up on the armrest.

"So," she began. "I figure I'll hang with you guys from now on."

"You figure?" I said – almost snarled.

"That's what you were building up to, right? I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I'm not a moron. I'm hot stuff, in more ways than one."

The statement was accompanied by a sweeping gesture that took in her whole body. I decided then and there that there was something I really didn't like about Brian's sister. Her confidence bordered on arrogance in her actions, her skills, her sexuality. What made it worse was that she was right on all counts; I'd already been thinking that we needed an infiltrator only to have one drop into my lap, and even though her body had been toned by an adept's exercise routine, it was clear that she'd still have been beautiful even without much effort on her part.

Damn, that family has good genes.

"Right," Lisa nodded, though there was a wry look in her ethereal eyes. "I'm sure it's all on us. Not like you're desperate to find a new community and keep close to your brother, right?"

The same hand that had swept down her body twisted to flip Lisa off, but Aisha didn't deny it.

"You're right," I nodded. "We do need an infiltrator." I crossed my arms; I wanted to look stern, drawing up half-remembered memories of mom telling me off for booking it across the road when she'd come to pick me up from school and almost being run over by a box truck. "But if you're going to stick with us, you're going to have to be a team player. We've got no room for lone wolves."

"Who died and made you boss?" Aisha snapped back. "You've been with them for like five minutes."

Your brother, I almost said, before I stamped the impulse down with no small amount of guilt.

"Brian's in the hospital right now because we went up against an overwhelming enemy without a decent plan. We hoped for the best and we got burned. I'm the one with the link to all the cameras, with the picture of the whole operation. I'm the only person in the crew who can see everything, and that means when shit hits the fan, you listen to me. Do that and you'll earn back your burned savings in a flash."

I was trying to project the same absolute confidence Aisha seemed to exude so effortlessly, but I couldn't stop my eyes from flicking over to Lisa. More than anyone else, she could undercut my words in an instant. I knew that I was right, knew that our failure in the last operation had come from a lack of knowledge and control, that I was in the best position to provide both, but Lisa was the one who brought me onto the crew in the first place. She could cast me out or knock me back into my place with a single word. Instead she just stood there, her ghostly projection completely unreadable.

In the end, Aisha broke first. "Sure, whatever," she said, with a shrug of her shoulders. "I'll play ball. This is the part where I'd turn invisible and fuck off, but you cracked my damn faceplate."

"Switch on your comm, I'll transfer the repair bill," I said – I was so flush from cash compared to where I had been a few months ago that it seemed a completely trivial thing to offer – "but as an advance only, understand? You pay me back after your first job."

"Yeah, yeah," she almost rolled off the couch as she sprang to her feet, pulling her mask back up over her face. "I'll send you my account details, soon as I figure out how."

She made to leave, though not in the way I was expecting. Instead of taking the front door like a normal person, she put her cracked mask and hood back on, retrieved her tomahawk from my wall, and slid open the door to my balcony, stepping out and vaulting over the side like it was a completely normal thing to do. As she went, I saw a simple comm wink into existence. It was a trivial matter to hack into it and add my contact details, along with the rest of the team's.

The moment I was sure she was out of earshot, I turned to Lisa.

"Are you okay with this? You said I needed to step up, but I don't know if this is what you meant."

"You're doing fine," she answered. "Honestly, I wasn't expecting you to be so pragmatic. She might annoy you, but Imp has a skillset we need and she has a reputation of her own in certain circles."

"Imp?" I asked, before another thought took its place. Brian had no idea where his sister was. "He doesn't know you've been spying on her, does he?"

"No, he doesn't. And he won't."

"Why not tell him?"

"If I had, he'd have been down at that commune every night asking after her, but all he'd have accomplished would be to drive her away. I've always been an empathetic person, Taylor, but nobility teaches you to wield empathy like a weapon. I understand what makes people tick; how they'll act when they're nudged in certain ways."

"Did you nudge me, too?" I asked.

"Ever since our first conversation," she answered, frankly. "Can you honestly tell me you aren't better off now than you were then?"

I frowned. She was right – I'd even acknowledged as much earlier that day – but it was still an unpleasant thought.

"You're shaping up to be a confident and decisive leader, but I think I work best as the power behind the throne."

"The throne?" I asked. "Aiming a little high, aren't we?"

"We're Shadowrunners," she answered with a shrug. "Reckless overambition is kind of our whole thing."

Abruptly, something like a whole body shiver seemed to pass through her translucent form, which frayed and faded like a persona running on a bad connection.

"Sorry, omae, I can't stay out any longer. Astral projection is taxing as hell."

"I get it," I said, waving her off. "Thanks for the help. Now and… before."

She flashed me a wry grin that seemed to linger as the rest of her faded, like she was my very own Cheshire Cat.

"Never been thanked for manipulating someone before. Catch you later, Spider."

With that, she disappeared, leaving me once again alone in my apartment. The quiet was suddenly stifling, the lack of any noise or activity allowing weariness to seep back into my bones. Reflexively, I reached out in the matrix and made sure my apartment was secure again; Aisha had tricked the lock on the balcony, exploiting some mechanical flaw that I couldn't affect, but I could draw down the storm shutters and engage their magnetic locks, cutting off the night-time glow of the docks.

I skimmed through icons both familiar and unfamiliar, linking each one to their proper place in my apartment, the neighbouring units, building management systems out in the halls and the one personal area network that was completely out of place.

"Oh shit!" I exclaimed as I undid the lock on my front door and threw it open. The first thing I saw was the shotgun barrel pointed at where the lock had been. Rachel looked like she was a microsecond from firing. Instead, her optics flicked up to take in the empty room.

"Thanks, Rachel," I said, "but I've managed to get the situation under control."

"Good," she nodded, an optic flicking back towards the elevator in what seemed like an uncharacteristic hint of uncertainty. "Can I wait here for a while? I think building security called Knight Errant."

"Of course, come in," I said, closing the door behind her even as I dug deep into the apartment block's camera database. It was trivially easy; I used to lay up at night practicing how to hack the building's network, which meant I had more marks on it than any other system in the city.

Each mark acted as an anchor point onto which I could tether myself, pulling up footage of Rachel storming through the lobby past the one half-asleep guard who jolted up at the sight of a chromed-up killer with a shotgun held ready in her hands. I could have edited the footage to make it look like she was never there, but instead I simply deleted the files outright. Let Knight Errant think this was some Chosen hit with an amateurish off-site decker.

In meatspace, Rachel had wandered into my living room, her shotgun resting on her shoulder as she took in the space. I was getting better at reading the few expressions that crept past her inhuman optics; she was deeply confused.

"Not what I expected," she said, turning back to me.

"It was my parents' place," I answered, shrugging. "I didn't pick the décor."

Rachel simply nodded, apparently satisfied with that explanation.

"Listen," I began, picking the couch back up and slumping down onto it. "You should know, the intruder was Brian's sister. She's a pretty good adept and she jumped me looking for him. I made her a pitch and she agreed to join. Sorry for not running it by you beforehand, but you and her won't get on. I'll see if I can talk to her before you meet, warn her to tone it all the way down."

Rachel sat down opposite me, in the armchair I used when I dove into the matrix. It took her a while to say anything; I could see her optics whirring minutely in silent thought.

"She's good for the team?"

"She fills a niche we don't have," I answered. "Right now, we're only really tooled for brute force. We can infiltrate – we proved that in the dopadrine job – but it's not what we're geared around. Imp will give us options."

"I won't drive her off. Don't expect me to make nice."

"Wouldn't dream of it," I leant back, smiling. "Honestly, Alec's the one that worries me. With you, I knew a warning would be enough, but both Aisha and Alec are the type to enjoy needling people. They'll probably be at each other's throats by the end of the week."

I sighed, feeling the weight of one problem building on another. Things would be so much easier if I thought more like Rachel; I could focus solely on the big-picture practical problems, instead of trying to force my introverted brain through one social issue after another.

"Doesn't matter, I guess, so long as it improves our chances in the field. We can't afford another job like the last one."

"Brian will keep them in line," Rachel answered.

"Really?" I was surprised, both at the suggestion and that Rachel had said it.

"It's what he did before you joined," Rachel answered. "Kept Alec from bugging Lisa, made sure I knew when I'd stepped over the line."

"Yeah, well, he might not be the same person when he gets out. He's been through a lot, and believe me when I say I know how badly an experience like that can affect someone."

She didn't seem convinced, but I knew that was just because her own experiences had changed her into the sort of person who can't understand something like that. She'd retreated into a cold, logical world where every piece of a machine either functions as expected or is broken, with no states in-between.

"Looks like the pawns have arrived," I spoke up, breaking the silence. Through the lobby's camera I had a good view of a quartet of officers in taksuits and face-covering helmets making their way over to the lone guard at the desk, each one of them armed with a rifle.

The guard – an overweight ork with a ratty old revolver tucked into a shoulder holster – spoke to the officers for a few minutes, then gestured for one of them to come behind the desk as he pulled up the CCTV footage on the monitor. It was kind of funny watching his eyes boggle as he realised the files had all been wiped, even as the Knight Errant officers suddenly became a lot more interested. I watched their outgoing comms as they radioed the situation back to control, then waited for them to get their marching ordered from whoever was directing operations that night.

"Any trouble?" Rachel asked.

"We're good," I replied, shaking my head. "I gave them just enough trouble that they'll leave us alone." I smiled, as an old memory floated to the surface.

"Did you know that Knight Errant commanders are rated by metrics that measure whether their expenditure on crimes is worth the value of those crimes in their contract with the city? Hunting down a lone gunwoman in an apartment block is fine when she's making a lot of noise and you can follow her on CCTV, but it's not worth the cost if she's keeping quiet and has outside Decker support. There's a whole book about it back there."

I threw a gesture over my shoulder towards the bookcase containing 'Militarised Policing or Military Police? Understanding Knight Errant.' It was one of mom's favourites, published by some independent printer I'd never heard of and distributed solely to small speciality bookstores that existed in quiet streets far from the main roads.

"And there they go," I said with a satisfied smirk as the officers filed out of the lobby, switching over to the exterior camera as they got back into their bulky patrol four-by-four. "K-E are running double strength patrols because of the gang war, but that means that each car is costing twice as much in terms of pay."

"Why not send them out in pairs and accept the higher risk to cut costs?" Rachel asked.

"Not how they think. Culturally, they're an army. They treat policing like it's a counterinsurgency; if it gets too hot, hunker down in your forts and move out in force to break up the largest pockets of resistance. You've got to remember that when things get desperate, Knight Errant will always prioritise its own interests – and those of Ares – over its contract with the city."

I was pretty much regurgitating something mom had told me one night when I'd asked her what she was reading. I'd been too young to really understand what she was saying, but I remembered it all the same.

Rachel simply nodded. I could almost trace her thought process as she corrected her knowledge of what Knight Errant's machine was built to do, reformatting all the inconsistencies into something that functioned for a different purpose.

"How are you holding up?" I asked, changing the subject.

"One Doberman is parts now, to repair the rest. Most of the damage to the van was just dented panels, but the rear axle had microfractures and needed replacing. The Steel Lynx still needs work, but I don't have the parts yet."

"Can you source them? If not, I bet someone in Palanquin can point you in the right direction."

"I have a contact," she answered.

"And yourself?"

"Undamaged."

Not what I meant, but I trust your judgement.

"Good. Things are changing, Rachel. Not just with us. Calvert… he's got plans. I don't know if he can cripple Medhall – I don't even know what a crippled Medhall looks like – but I get the feeling that this gang war is just the start."

"They always have plans," Rachel shot back, placing a strange emphasis on the word. "They don't matter so long as you can adapt."

"Roll with the punches, huh?" I asked. I knew from my stolen memories that it was what Rachel had been doing for her entire adult life, and probably before. "Thanks, Rachel, you're a good listener. You should be able to sneak out the back, now. Take the fire stairs at the far end of the hall and I'll unlock the emergency exit for you."

I watched through the cameras as Rachel made her way down the thirteen flights, even as I followed the irresistible lure of my bed. I almost made it, too; I'd undressed and pulled back the covers when I felt an incoming message pressing at the edge of my simulated commlink. I would have ignored it if it was from anyone else, but I'd logged the number as 'Mr Johnson,' which meant it deserved a cursory glance at the very least.

»Please contact me when convenient to discuss the next stage of our arrangement.«
- Number Withheld (00:41:16/24-3-2070)

Getting one last email in before leaving the office? I thought, spitefully. Well, fuck you too.

I called his number, even as I sank back into my bed and crossed my arms behind my head. One benefit of using my brain rather than an actual commlink was that it had no camera, so I couldn't do a video call even if I wanted to. Our serpentine client picked up after three point four seconds – though I realised in that moment that I had no idea how he answered a call. Eye tracking? Voice activation? Paying someone to press the screen for him?

"Spider," his voice came through loud, clear and disappointingly awake. "You did strike me as the type to burn the midnight oil, as the expression goes."

"I can't say it's mutual. I figured you'd keep office hours. You racking up overtime?"

"I did not reach my position by counting hours. When my work here is done, I will take the gratitude of my corporation somewhere warm and dry. While I am in this city, however, I will work as long as it takes to see events resolved in my favour."

"Okay," I answered, making a mental note not to even consider small talk. "What do you want us to do, bearing in mind we're still a man down?"

Something seemed to shift in the matrix, smothering the line between us in a fog of data. Calvert's security spider was layering an additional level of encription over the call. I reached out in turn, but couldn't spot any unseen observers or trickling data leaks.

"Alabaster has painted a suitable picture of Medhall's connections to the criminal and political world, but I still require more information on the corporation's leadership."

"Which, more particularly, means Max Anders," I countered.

"Precisely. Medhall is autocratic; understanding the corporation means understanding its patriarch. Max Anders' inner circle is beyond my reach, but that does not make him unreachable."

He paused for a moment, as if catching his breath.

"Medhall's data network was not created in-house. As with most corporations in-house, they lacked the capital and expertise to develop their own software. Instead, they have a long-term lease on their hosts, outsourced software and database support, and an exclusive communications network."

"Who's their MSP?"

"Renraku. They have a reputation for neutrality and trustworthiness whose foundations are well-earned. Ideal for the corporate executive who has to keep in contact with members of his board, local political figures and local underworld figures all from the same commlink."

"So you want me to hack his work comm?"

"No. I want you to hack his personal commlink."

"Why?" I asked, unable to keep the confusion from my tone. It just didn't make sense. "Why not target the business through the man? Hell, why not wait until tomorrow and set up a meet with all of us?"

"Because that is what most suits my goals. I did not contact you to discuss why, I contacted you to warn you, specifically."

"Warn me? About what?"

"My own investigation has uncovered that Anders keeps his family on the same mobile data plan. It will likely be the standard plan for someone of his wealth; all messages end-to-end encrypted, unlimited worldwide data. Renraku calls it the 'Myo' package, after the lords of secret knowledge in the Shinto faith. It is their most closely-guarded commercial network."

"I've dealt with complex networks before," I said, a little insulted. I wasn't an amateur.

"You have not 'dealt with' Renraku. The security protocols used by any member of the Corporate Court would already be beyond anything you have experienced, but Renraku's main strength lies in computer technologies. They created Deus, the first AI, and even after his insanity they still recruit wild AI for use in matrix defence. It would take a team of deckers to breach the network from the outside. Even then, the breach would be noted and the clients alerted."

"I take it you have some sort of plan?" I snapped. I didn't appreciate him regurgitating whatever one of his advisors had told him.

"Unlike other corporations, Renraku is divided geographically, rather than categorically. This means each division needs to have its own physical office supporting their global communications network. The North American office is in Boston, where it is suitably positioned to poach disgruntled NeoNet staff."

"I see where you're going," I said. "Infiltrate the site somehow, get access to the network's local node by spoofing the correct credentials and work the system from the inside."

"Precisely. You understand why I'm contacting you now; as talented as he is, Grue's skills are not suited to this task and I do not care for any needless delay."

"Then make your offer," I said. "I'll pitch it to the others in the morning and get back to you."

"Forty-thousand."

Twenty less than the last job, but it's also less obviously suicidal.

"Make it forty-two thousand. We have a new member – an infiltrator – and it splits nicely six ways. And send me everything you have on this site."

"Fortuitous timing. Very well, Spider. Now, if you will excuse me, there are other matters that demand my attention."

Without waiting for a response, he hung up and the line went dead, the security spider reeling back in his encrypted wire. I compiled everything Calvert had told me into an email, gave it to a courier sprite with orders to deliver it to Tattletale, Bitch and Regent at eight AM and finally pulled up the covers, slipping away into a deep sleep filled with unremembered dreams.

Recompile - 6.05

The I95 was a clogged artery of a road; twelve lanes separated by a two metre tall metal barrier and filled to bursting with a myriad of vehicles, each performing their own function like cells in the bloodstream.

The outermost lanes were the domain of fat-bellied eighteen wheelers that were themselves dwarfed by elongated road trains whose dozen single-container carriages were pulled along by immense wheeled engines. When the train reached its junction, those carriages would decouple – each becoming a self-driving pod that carried just enough charge in its battery to carry the containers to their final destination.

In the middle lanes flowed a diverse stream of traffic, where panel vans rubbed shoulders with expensive suburban SUVs and beaten-up old junkers laden with the accumulated lives of the desperate inter-state migrants driving them. Each of them was engaged in a constant jockeying for position; throwing themselves into any gap they could see in order to advance a few metres further down the endless line of sixty mile an hour traffic.

None of them dared to enter the innermost lane, however, where the vehicles were almost blurs as they passed at over a hundred miles an hour. That was the domain of those who hit the road for pleasure, rather than necessity. The junkers in that lane had been fitted with overclocked engines and daubed in garish decals, while the supercars of the ultra-rich cut through the air like ethereal spaceships one plane removed from the physical reality of wind resistance.

I jerked back reflexively as an entire Go-Gang sped past with the doppler-shifted roar of three dozen Japanese motorcycles, each one carrying a biker wearing anything from slick-skinned cooler suits and all-encompassing helmets to short shorts that flaunted implanted musculature and tattoos that had clearly been chosen to match the bike. Out of the whole gang, only about half had both hands on the handlebars. The rest had at least one holding a weapon of some sort, from snub-nosed submachine guns to a length of pipe that one biker used to knock the wingmirror off the car in front of us.

We'd just passed the junction with Route One, where the Ninety-Five turned west to skirt at a comfortable distance from what had once been the limits of Boston and its suburbs. The city had long since burst its banks, absorbing one town after another as the founding settlements of the American Revolution were overshadowed one by one by the aegis of their larger neighbour.

Brockton Bay was the only city I'd ever really known. It had always seemed so large, so teeming with life, but driving through Boston forced me to come to terms with the fact that it was still just a city. The Boston Area Metropolitan Complex was a sprawl; a city that had slipped its ancient bounds in a period of uncontrolled urban growth in all directions, from the outskirts that surrounded us to the floating arcologies permanently moored in Massachusetts Bay.

Periodically, we passed under the shadow of immense slab-sided megabuildings that rose like monoliths into the skyline, each housing a small fraction of the five million people who called the Metroplex home. They were uncommon in this part of the city, however; Boston's intelligentsia preferred to live away from the cramped sprawl of the city's heart and they couldn't afford to live in its preserved historical centre. Instead, they lived in innumerable gated communities of suburban homes and low-rise buildings that contained condominiums, not apartments, all of them linked to whatever corporation owned the neighbourhood and the people in it.

It wasn't the sort of place that most of us would ever have been able to touch. Rachel's van felt empty without Brian sitting up in the front, his statuesque back and impressive height casting a literal shadow on the rest of us. Aisha wasn't close to her brother's size – or my own, for that matter – but it still felt like she took up twice as much space in the back of the van.

She'd spent the whole journey alternating from shifting in her seat to leaning over the front seats, to pacing the back of the van and getting far too close to Bitch's immaculately-ordered mobile workshop. It was enough to make me sympathise with my parents for what they must have put up with when I was a toddler.

And she just wouldn't shut up. The drive from Brockton Bay had only been about an hour and a half, but Aisha had somehow managed to talk through all of it. When she wasn't just venting her every idle thoughts into space, she was chatting to Alec about anything and everything. If I'd thought they'd hate each other, I'd been proven horrifyingly wrong; they got on like oil and fire. I knew why Aisha was so lively, of course. I could have replicated the effect by putting a cat in a box and taping the lid shut.

"You seriously couldn't have sprung for some better seats back here?" Aisha loudly asked as we pulled off the I95, abruptly changing tack from where she'd been whispering to Alec about… something. I didn't want to know what.

"No point," Rachel answered, succinctly, before Alec pulled Aisha's attention back – literally grabbing her chin and pulling her head back to face him. Maybe her wandering mind was starting to wear on him like it did me? Rachel had been holding up well, all things considered; she'd simply chosen to focus on the road while trusting me to keep Aisha away from touching anything important.

Aisha does have a point, I thought to myself. These canvas seats might be good enough for jarheads in the back of helicopters, but not for long drives down the interstate.

"We're almost there," I said, partly to distract myself from how uncomfortable I was. "Lisa, are you ready? Today's your show, after all."

She stretched a bare arm behind the backrest before turning her head to look at me, reaching up to brush her hair back behind her pointed ear.

"Honey, I was born ready."

It was amazing how much she resembled the worst, most cliquey people back in high school, and yet how the sight of her triggered none of the same emotions in me. "Well, you certainly look the part."

"It's in my blood," Tattletale answered with a flawless and – fortunately – completely fake air of superiority. "How about you? This is uncharted territory, right?"

"It's all the same matrix," I bluffed. Truthfully, I had no idea what to expect; I'd never visited Boston's grid before. When the matrix covered the whole world, destinations that were within driving distance didn't appeal anywhere near as much as Paris, New York, Hong Kong or London.

Beyond that, I had no idea what kind of opposition I was going to be up against. Far from warning me, I felt like all Calvert had managed to achieve was to put me on edge with his talk of AI and his callback to DEUS. The way he'd spoken about that entity had rattled me most of all; DEUS was a matrix legend, but Calvert had casually mentioned his name as if his existence was an undeniable fact.

Boston was the graveyard of that would-be-god, according to the rumours. What was certain was that the East Coast Stock Exchange in Boston had been the epicentre of the Jormangund Virus that had killed the old matrix, as well as being targeted by one of the fifteen nuclear-fuelled electromagnetic pulse bombs that had crippled the wired network's physical infrastructure.

The official line was that the crash had been caused by a terrorist doomsday cult, but rumours said that all of that destruction and death had been nothing more than a desperate attempt to avert DEUS' plan to forcibly connect all the world's supercomputers into a single node that would fuel the AI's apotheosis. The attempt had failed, or so the rumours said, and DEUS had died along with the old matrix.

It wasn't just Calvert's conviction that made me believe the rumour; I'd long since been exposed to the surreal reality that lay below the ordered veneer that was the matrix. It was easy to believe such legends could exist when I'd traversed the resonance realms like Alice lost in Wonderland.

You couldn't see Boston's scars in meatspace and I hadn't yet immersed myself into the city's grid to check. As we left the I95 and drove through a district called Lexington, past the strip malls and consumer product distribution warehouses that clustered like feeder animals around the junction, it seemed like any other city in the UCAS. It was only as we travelled further in that I started to see the signs that we were somewhere wealthy.

There were fewer junctions on the road, for one, just feeder roads leading to one private corporate neighbourhood after another. There were no homes overlooking the road, either. Instead, we were hidden from view behind tall fences, artful shrubbery and real evergreen trees – each of which had their own grid-linked monitoring and nutrient system to keep them alive in the face of the occasional atmospheric offensive drifting over from the rest of the metroplex.

As with all things, however, there was a balance in Lexington's wealth. The rich wanted to separate themselves from the world, but not completely; some concessions were necessary. Somebody had to staff the shops, tend the lawns and provide the boots on the ground that were the foundation of their prized security.

The gated communities could either improve the transport links to the rest of the city – which would allow the rest of the city to come to them – or they could swallow some iota of their pride and parcel off a patch of land for the sake of necessity. They'd chosen the latter.

In this case, that meant a wide, unmarked road that wound its way down into a natural depression in the land that had been excavated further until it could fit a tight cluster of four long buildings, each five storeys tall with only the top three storeys visible above the ground level. Even those were concealed by a carefully-transplanted wall of tall trees. It was a town in microcosm, with three of the buildings dedicated to apartments and the last reserved for all the essentials a town might need – a school, a clinic, a miniature Minuteman Security precinct, a whole floor of shops and a few essential services occupying the topmost floor.

You could actually buy your own online, if you had the kind of cred corps or municipal governments could throw around. The whole thing was a Saeder-Krupp product; a low-footprint housing estate for low income workers that included ongoing services and support for a reasonable ongoing rate. The exact same four buildings could be found across the world; on corporate job sites, repeated a dozen times over on the edge of sprawls, or – like here – nestled in some out of the way place in a more prosperous district.

Bitch dropped me off in front of the commercial building, pulling up behind a minibus full of gardeners returning from their shift. Keeping the homes of the wealthy running required odd jobs at odd hours, from the gardeners maintaining each municipal lawn to the twenty-four seven security keeping watch over each gated community. It meant the estate didn't really have on or off hours; around me I could see people who were coming, going or enjoying some small leisure time.

The inside of the commercial building was a fairly typical low-ceilinged strip mall, with decently-lit white corridors passing glass-fronted stores that all leant towards the lower end of the market; advertising cheap prices for cheaper clothes, overprocessed groceries and plastic furniture. Each store had a sign next to the entrance depicting which currency they accepted, with UCAS dollars and Nuyen next to a small number of different varieties of scrip paid by megacorps to their employees to ensure they spent their wages within the corp and its affiliates.

At the end of the row of shops – no doubt a deliberate choice by the Saeder-Krupp architects to maximise foot traffic – was a cluster of elevators that I rode up to the fifth floor. It still looked like a mall, but the corridor was a little narrower; this floor was for people who were looking for specific service buildings, rather than impulse buying. I passed a dentist and a clinic before finally finding what I was looking for; a Comfy Cubicle franchise.

Our target was a gated Renraku neighbourhood built around a large data centre. It had been built in Boston before Crash 2.0 to take advantage of the city's position as a wired matrix hub, and the close proximity to the East Coast Stock Exchange before it moved back to Wall Street. Distance wasn't everything in hacking, but it did make a difference and the Renraku compound was less than a kilometre away. The real issue, though, was that I couldn't lie down in the back of Bitch's van, which made a deep dive into the Matrix an uncomfortable prospect.

There were no employees on site. Or, at least, none of them were visible. Instead, I was met by a simple touchscreen next to a sliding door with a mesh-reinforced window. The menu had large font, larger buttons and was generally idiot proof – it wasn't like there were many options to choose from. Being forced to pay extra for the larger version of the product was a gripe I was long familiar with, but it was hard to argue with the necessity here. Coffin hotels weren't famous for being spacious, after all.

With the payment made and a check-out time set for six AM – the earliest the system would allow – the reinforced door slid open to reveal a long corridor of one-metre square doors stacked three high, with rungs built into the doors themselves so that people could reach the top shelf. Most of the coffins were unoccupied at this time of day, but a handful had red lights on their doors rather than green, and one bottom-shelf coffin was open, with a human woman in worn clothes taking one look at me before hurriedly throwing a cheap backpack into the coffin and climbing in after it. I tried not to hold it against her.

Beyond the normal-sized coffins was a small area containing a handful of communal shower cubicles and toilets, as well as a single vending machine next to a narrow floor to ceiling window that looked out onto the rest of the estate. After that came the troll-sized coffins; one point five metres square and arranged side-on so that they could be three metres long, rather than two.

I clambered up into my second-row coffin, ducking my head to fit my horns under the top as I shuffled back and pulled the door shut behind me. Inside, the coffin was a white space with a thin foam mattress for a floor, covered in a wipe-clean plastic surface. There were two narrow shelves built into the wall near the entrance, and a small console of electronics set at the far end that could be manipulated to turn on the air conditioning, alarm clock, integrated commlink or the trideo set that could be swung up to the ceiling for a more comfortable viewing experience. Of course, none of it would work without an additional payment.

It wasn't exactly the most comfortable bed in the world, but it was more comfortable than huddling up on the floor of a moving van. I crawled down the length of the coffin until I could lie flat on my back, then flicked off the lights with a stray thought before opening my mind to the matrix.

The scope of it was overwhelming. Boston had been a centre of technological advancement even back in the Fifth World; in the present day it was still a central hub for any number of telecommunications and matrix service providers, megacorporate research sites, classified academic databases and the almost overwhelming presence of NeoNet, the megacorporation that called Boston home. For the first time, I found myself almost overwhelmed by the sight of the myriad datastreams passing through the ether – that any man-made interface device filtered out as a matter of course.

The matrix had always appeared to me as a black void in which metahumanity's presence hung like a constellation of multifaceted stars. Icons, datastreams and personas thronged around the blocky, geometric shapes of hosts, while larger, more private hosts hovered overhead like immense islands in the sky. In and among those islands, perpetually visible no matter where I looked, were the icons of the various grids.

The public grid was free and accessible to all in a supposed act of philanthropy by the Matrix's creators, but it was slow and easily breached, which meant that for the average user it was an easy way to have your persona harassed, bombarded with spam and robbed. Far above them, looming on the horizon, were the symbols of private pay-to-access grids managed by different matrix service providers. Hub Grid was Boston's own, while UCAS Online served the country as a whole, but they were local grids that only offered good service within their geographical bounds. To support worldwide coverage you needed more resources than a nation had on hand.

The symbol of Renraku Okoku was a red pagoda visible in the far distance, until I focused my attention on it and opened myself up to its attention. Neither of us moved, but I was suddenly dwarfed beneath the immense side of the pagoda, as Renraku's friendly user interface menu appeared before my persona. I'd debated the merits of hacking in before deciding it simply wasn't worth it; I'd already had to make some subtle tweaks to my presence in the matrix in order to present myself as a Xiao Technologies XT-2G commlink associated with a SIN I'd cloned from a Boston resident. Adding on fake Renraku permissions would only weaken that façade, so instead I transferred the funds to get me legitimate access to Renraku's grid.

The doors of the pagoda opened, bathing me in a red glow, as the matrix around me shifted from the freeing utilitarianism of the public grid to something altogether more controlled, flooded with bandwidth but sculpted and constrained to suit the will of its makers.

It wasn't as Japanese as I was expecting. Instead, Boston's matrix was represented as a distinctly New Englander pastoral idyll, with rolling hills broken up by colonial-era dwellings and red barns that would impress the Amish if it weren't for the many obvious reasons they'd never see it.

"I'm on the grid," I spoke through the link to the rest of the team. "It's surprisingly homely in here."

Tattletale's voice came back loud and clear, transmitted by a vibration microphone built into her earring. "Renraku's as conservative as any other Japancorp, but they adapt their conservatism to match their environment. The c-suite is as Japanese as it gets, but at the regional level they'll at least pay lip service to Americana."

"It's not an America I've ever seen," I mused, with another glance at the environment. "What's your status?"

"Split up, as we discussed. I'm in a cab and about three minutes out."

"Is it safe for you to talk?" If there was a driver in front of her, it might be worth keeping up the façade just in case.

Tattletale laughed. "The cab's driverless, omae; nobody here but us shadowrunners. One of these days I'm going to use my hard-won blood money to show you how the other half lives."

"I'm about to get a front row view," I countered, as I managed to track down Lisa's commlink in the matrix. "I have eyes on you now."

Lisa was wearing delicate AR-linked contact lenses that were paired with her commlink. Each allowed her to look into the publicly-visible augmented reality objects of the matrix, running on a travel plan with the Eternal Horizon grid to best fit into the fake identity she'd constructed. Like all the best fakes, she'd told me, it was basically the truth.

As the taxi pulled to a stop, Lisa stepped out into a large parking lot half full of high-end motors from a dozen different manufacturers. She turned, and the mall swung into view.

It wasn't just a mall, of course. The immense structure of steel and glass occupied one side of a gated Renraku community of idyllic suburban homes, luxury condo buildings and a few functional yet still aesthetically appealing tenement blocks tucked away in one corner. The mall occupied the lowest floors of the structure, with one forecourt opening up into the Renraku compound and the other facing out towards the car park and Boston beyond it, luring in people from across the city in much the same way an angler fish lured in prey with a pretty light.

Above that mall, rising up fifteen stories, was the Renraku data centre. It wasn't the only workplace in the compound but it was by far the largest and – according to Renraku's own press releases – employed the largest percentage of the compound's residents. Unlike the glass-fronted megamall that occupied the lowest floors, the tower above was largely windowless, save for a horizontal strip of balconies at the halfway point and the occasional long strip of narrow windows or glass-fronted elevator shaft that ran vertically up the sides of the building.

Tattletale strode towards the mall with an absolute and effortless confidence, as if the looming demonstration of megacorporate power meant nothing to her. The mall – and, by extension, Renraku's extraterritorial enclave – was separated from both Boston and the UCAS by a checkpoint manned by security guards who were dressed like no private security I'd ever seen.

It was almost like they'd chosen to show up to work in their dress uniforms; perfectly-ironed suit jackets with polished metal buttons worn over a white button-up shirt and an actual tie, of all things. The jackets were Renraku's trademarked shade of red, while the pants, tie and their peaked caps were a shade of blue so deep it was almost black. Crowning the whole ensemble were their spotless white gloves.

Before subjecting Tattletale to a SIN check and an x-ray scan, the officer assigned to her actually bowed, Japanese style, and apologised for the inconvenience. She remained courteous even while Tattletale completely blanked her, a flick of her fingers opening up a Tír Tairngire gossip magazine in AR.

I'd always known that wealth opened doors, but it was one thing to understand it on an intellectual level and another thing entirely to see it in action. I knew from mom that Renraku were as racist as most of the other Japancorps, but Tattletale's metatype was clearly secondary to the careful air of wealth she'd cultivated around her. Of course, I very much doubt security would be so cordial if they figured out why we were there.

In the matrix, I followed Tattletale into the mall's host, which resembled a historic Boston department store from the outside. It was a little incongruous sitting in the middle of the colonial-era frontier village that represented the surrounding hosts, but who was I to criticise a megacorp's visual design team?

Unlike Tattletale, my access was completely unobstructed; I was already on Renraku's grid, but even then the matrix wasn't bound by national laws in the same way as meatspace. If someone from Boston wanted to order something from the mall and have it delivered, Renraku weren't going to quibble about access when there was money to be made and no risk they could see.

Tattletale strode casually past the lower end stores on the ground floor of the mall, meant to draw in impulse buyers and provide essential goods to the residents of the compound. She didn't bite, riding the escalators to the top floor where the luxury brands dwelled. There was a wide variety of designer products and businesses selling them, though I knew each of them was a wholly-owned Renraku subsidiary no matter what the sign over the door said.

The matrix version of the mall was far more compact, but only if you wanted it to be. Users could browse through a catalogue of each store's inventory or they could expand the store into a perfect mirror of its realspace counterpart and wander the shelves as if they were there in person, making purchases that would then be delivered to their address. Like the pastoral overlay on Renraku's grid, it seemed like a pointless waste of processing power to me – a needless surrender to physical reality – but I'd begun to accept that I didn't actually understand much about what normal people wanted from cyberspace.

Tattletale browsed her way from store to store with the languid ease of someone utterly at home in their surroundings, even making a few purchases with a discretionary budget we'd negotiated from Calvert to help sell her cover. The other customers were mostly human and most of them were noticeably older than Tattletale, but she still fit right in.

Once enough time had passed for her to sell her cover, she finally made her way to a store whose window displays advertised the latest version of Renraku's 'Sensei' model of high-end commlinks.

The moment she entered the store, I saw a pair of eyes land on her. A period of exactly ten seconds passed – long enough for Tattletale to take in the store – before she was intercepted by a sales clerk in a black pencil skirt and closed-necked white suit jacket reminded me somewhat of a pharmacist. It was undeniably a uniform, rather than a suit, and had a small Renraku logo – a red circle containing the company's name in white English letters as a concession to the local market – printed on the breast.

The ginger-haired human woman was all smiles and congeniality as she gave Tattletale a greeting that had clearly been rehearsed enough to no longer sound rehearsed. She didn't bow – probably another concession to American sensibilities – but her stance practically oozed corporate servility, with her hands clasped in front of her and a placid expression on her face.

"Greetings, ma'am. Is there any way I can assist you today?"

"You certainly can!" Tattletale exclaimed, cheerfully. We hadn't actually acquired a fake SIN for her, but we also didn't want anyone to trace our activities back to Lisa Wilbourne. So I'd re-registered Lisa's commlink under her old name - Saraye Liaran – and linked it to her very real Tír Tairngire SIN. The Tír was secretive enough that it didn't share any SIN data beyond the fact that the individual bearing it was a citizen, but I was standing by ready to tweak any data in case Renraku were somehow able to tell if she'd been added to a missing persons registry or listed as dead.

To match her cover, Tattletale had rolled her accent back to its original state; adopting the almost sonorous tones of someone who'd grown up speaking the elven language of sperathiel. To my distinctly non-elven ears, she sounded like a valley girl who couldn't decide if that valley was in California or Wales.

"I've been thinking about changing my matrix service provider, and figured I might as well do it while I'm here," she continued, placing a hand on the attendant's back in a way that might have been seen as friendly and gracious if you were an ultra-privileged girl with no concept of boundaries. She practically led the woman over to the couches that occupied one side of the store, who bore the indignity with the placid stoicism of someone who was paid to tolerate the whims of the wealthy in order to part them from their wealth.

"I am at your service," the attendant spoke, sitting primly with her legs together and back straight as Tattletale sank languidly into the opposite couch. "We offer a variety of competitive plans to suit our client's needs. If I may ask, ma'am, what plan do you have at present?"

"Horizon's secure package, I don't know the details," Tattletale said with a dismissive wave. "It's perfect for home because Horizon are in bed with Prince Zincan, but daddy's finally decided to let me see the world before I go old and grey so I want something with a more worldwide presence."

"Horizon are a strong domestic company," the attendant – who hadn't given her name, and whose name Tattletale hadn't asked for – "but Renraku is a much older corporation with a far more global reach. We also have a substantial presence in Tír Tairngire through the tourism industry, which means you will notice no drop in service even when you return from your grand tour."

She hadn't outright insulted Horizon – just in case Tattletale held any brand loyalty to them – but she hadn't been honest, either. Both Horizon and Renraku were in the big ten; the largest companies in the world. Renraku might have had a larger proportion of its business dedicated to matrix services, but both maintained global grids that were largely comparable in signal strength.

"Great! It has to be really secure, though; daddy's orders." She gave a long, exasperated sigh that still somehow managed to come across as carefree.

"Renraku's ethos rests on three pillars; confidentiality, security and discretion. I can assure you, your data is safe with us."

As they kept talking, I turned my attention to the shop's online presence. As I'd hoped, I could see a clear chain of nodes leading from the store's systems to somewhere in the vast host of the data centre that hung above my persona and Tattletale's head. It didn't really matter what the connections were – whether they were for market research or they simply took advantage of the store's proximity to run trials on software that would be used franchise-wide. What mattered was that they were there, and that I could exploit them.

Tattletale had reached the crux of her conversation-slash-negotiation with the attendant, who'd been sending out signals through her company-given cybernetics, appealing for approval from someone above her and receiving assent from two sources a moment later. Probably someone in sales to authorise the offer and someone in security to verify the demo would be secure. Either way, Tattletale's AR contact lenses lit up with a request for a connection.

The moment she authorised it, a datastream appeared in my vision linking her and the store's server, which was in turn connected to a test version of Renraku's comm software. It wasn't the software we wanted – the 'Myo' package that the Anders family used was well beyond the means of any cover identity we could put together on short notice – but it was indirectly connected to the data host above. That would have to do.

As the attendant talked Tattletale through the various bells and whistles of the operating system, from simplified technical specifications to the perks that came with the plan, I slipped into Tattletale's comm using the pathways I'd built into it. As I'd expected, her system was currently experiencing the full weight of Renraku's scrutiny, as embodied by a dedicated Intrusion Countermeasure that was watching her every move for any hint of illegal activity.

As I attempted to weave my way into the IC's perceptions, I began to understand why Calvert had taken the time to warn me about Renraku's software advantage. The underlying coding that had gone into the program was fiendishly complex for piece of frontline monitoring software. I had to smother three separate alarms before they could be triggered, as the IC reflexively twinged at even the slightest intrusion on my part.

Eventually, however, its complex yet primitive mind finally concluded that I was just a sensor ghost, and it returned to Tattletale's actions as she began flicking her way through the homepage of Renraku's app store, feigning interest in what was on offer.

I turned my attention to the datastream. It crossed the barrier between Tattletale's commlink and a diagnostic terminal inside the data host. Judging by the data that was passing between the two devices, it was collecting data on Tattletale's commlink in order to adapt the operating system to best run on her specific device.

I began teasing messages on my own into the real-time log of Tattletale's CPU, trusting that the minute particles of resonance would go undetected even as they accumulated like dust on the other side of the host. It was like wearing away a mountain with drops of water, but it worked. The resonance gathered together on the other side of the host, latching onto the base code of the diagnostic terminal until it took shape as a simple line of script embedded into the system that was broadcasting instructions to Tattletale's comm.

The next transmission it sent was directed at me and contained a duplicate copy of the access permissions that allowed the terminal to send and receive data from outside the host. It was the key I needed; with a thought, I followed the datastream out of the mall and through the barrier of the Renraku data centre.

As I emerged into a black void populated by crisp angular geometric shapes and waterfall-like walls of red code, sculpted by overimaginative technicians to resemble nothing more than the trideo ideal of what the matrix should look like, I took a moment to let out a mental sigh of relief before sending out another transmission, wrapping the datastream in a concealing strand of resonance.

<I'm in. Imp, you're up.>

Beyond the confines of the host, I felt Imp's presence as she turned her commlink back to full functionality. I'd had her running almost silent, with only enough bandwidth to receive plaintext messages, and further shrouded her in a veil of resonance. Now I had full access to both her comm and the feed that Bitch had implanted into her suit, transmitting the feed from her optics to me.

Imp was looking out at Boston from the eleventh floor of the tower – the eighth floor of the data centre. This far from the heart of the city, I couldn't make out any details beyond the great angular silhouettes of megabuildings, arcologies and sharp skyscrapers, rising up like an artificial hill that peaked in the financial heart of the city. As Imp looked down at the vertigo-inducing drop to the parking lot, I saw her invisible body outlined in AR by vivid red lines. She was seated on the tempered glass railing of the balcony, her legs dangling out over empty space as she idly kicked her feet.

Without saying a word, she pushed against the balcony with her hands and – slowly, so as not to disrupt her stealth – lifted and twisted her whole body upwards until she held herself in a perfect handstand, looking upside down at the reinforced doors that led out onto the balcony. With an almost preternatural grace, she shifted her weight and lowered first one foot then the other onto the balcony, giving Boston an invisible bow before pivoting on her toes and striding towards the data centre as the character of her movement changed from a dancer's grace to the deadly elegance of a predator.

As I lifted the veil around her just enough to flash my mark on her comm, the balcony doors slid soundlessly open in recognition. She was in.

That was stage one, I thought. Now for the delicate part.