2078 - Highriders (Post-CP2077)

[Keiran Halcyon]

​

Chapter 1

My own breath resounded in the helmet.

Each exhalation brought a brief patch of condensation onto the millimeter thick transparent aluminum a mere inch from my nose.

Beyond that was the unforgiving vacuum of orbital space around Earth.

I had run weeks of raw brain dances from highrider workers fixing habitats and space stations in orbit to prepare for this gig. Just because I was used to it at this point though, didn't mean that I wasn't basically frightened out of my wits at what I was doing.

My eyes looked down and I saw the small shuttle that had brought me into orbit becoming smaller and smaller. Beyond that, the blue and white marble of Earth dominated the view and the shuttle was swiftly being swallowed up by the vast bulk of the planet. It had to go on its own way, keeping to the official flight plan to avoid suspicion from the security systems at my destination.

I forced my eyes back up, fixing them onto the bulk of the gargantuan counter-rotating space station that was as big as my fist at the moment, growing ever larger as my suit AI piloted us to a rendezvous.

Entrusting my life to the AI was not easy, especially as it didn't even have a general name it used to interact with humans at all. Which was funny, given that its sole reason for existing was to keep highriders alive in dynamic, on-the-fly spacewalks. Most highriders that I had read about growing up were good enough to not need one, but they were always there as backups when things inevitably went wrong.

I went over the suit readouts helpfully displayed directly into my optics. Everything was still in the green; fuel levels on track, suit pressure steady, power levels and oxygen. More than enough for nearly a full day in space, though the radiation count was enough that I didn't want to spend that long out here.

The suit's thruster pack on my back was giving me a nice easy 1G of acceleration to cross the 20k kilometers of distance to my target. The shuttle had done most of the job of matching velocities, now it was just a question of the suit doing the rest in a classic Hohmann transfer to intercept.

Velocity, heading, and time to intercept was steadily counting down from 46 minutes in my vision.

A thought to my internal Agent and the flick of an eye brought up my media player. I considered what to listen to for a moment and brought up Kerry's latest album. The one that I had helped give genesis to all those months ago on the 'Seamurai'. I still cringed at the name of that pleasure yacht and couldn't think of a more fitting end for it, than as a burnt out wreck at the bottom of Night City bay.

It was definitely more soothing to my nerves at the moment as the easy guitar strings of that first song played directly into the nerves of my ears.

The whole album was actually quite a departure from the usual thumping, screaming rock that he had been known for his whole career. There were still heavy guitar riffs throughout the album, but there wasn't a single scream.

I always wondered what Johnny would've thought of it, or if he could even bother to find out, now that he was a digital entity along with his old girlfriend and all the other liberated psyches in cyberspace.

Had they truly left all the material universe's worries behind?

I wrenched my thoughts back to just enjoying the songs and keeping a close eye on my progress through orbital space.

Three quarters of the way through the album, the space station was now looming in my view. I felt the suit gently coaxing my body to reorient. Reaction thrusters puffed to aid the move and now my feet were facing toward the station and the thrusters were working hard to shed relative velocity.

The station's radar was the next obstacle. The suit had specially woven EM absorbent properties, making me appear as a small piece of space debris. It was just enough to fall under the automated threat assessment that the station's computers used and as such wouldn't bring it to the human crew's attention.

Of course, I wasn't just relying on that and powered up an ECCM suite that would actively nullify any radar emission if they were focused on me.

It wasn't that long ago that the station had experienced history's first act of space piracy and a lot of eddies had gone into improving security. There was no way the world's rich and famous would risk their skins otherwise. Now I had to defeat that security.

The ping of the standard sweeping radar was visualized in my vision in a tactical diagram my Agent brought up.

It struck me and I watched with bated breath as the calculation was done on how much radar energy I had just reflected back…

6%

That was well under the threshold and I only marginally relaxed. I swept my own optics over the station and dozens of point defense turrets were highlighted all over the station. All of them were 20mm autocannons that fired all manner of smart ammunition; incendiary, HESH, AP. Fun for every occasion. Even with the military grade regenerative subdermal I had, I would swiftly be turned to swiss cheese under fire from munitions meant to destroy other ships and deflect space debris.

My aiming point was the lower part of the central station core pylon, which housed a number of airlocks for maintenance workers to use. Docking with the spinning torus sections was just too problematic and sims had shown that even if the AI could make it, there was just too much immediate security to overcome and not enough time to remotely disable them.

The approach to Maintenance Airlock C3 was halted by the AI at just fifty meters distance.

The station was now a looming presence filling my vision and I threw a carefully calibrated, low level active scan from my optics to double check everything was matching the schematics I had been given.

There were no exterior facing security cameras in these lower levels, a rather secretive cost cutting measure. It was on the list of things to do, but had been deferred by the station's management to next year's expenses.

How very corporate.

Just under three years ago… in what felt like another lifetime, I would've thought of doing the exact same thing had I been in their shoes.

What was down here was proximity sensors.

I focused and established a brute force connection, my mind leaping across the bridge I had established and the world of data erupted into my awareness.

It was the work of a few seconds to isolate the sensors and keep them sending the 'everything normal' pings back into the station subnet they were connected to.

I also immediately saw that the station's security netrunner had run a sweep just ten seconds earlier.

"Well, so far you're batting two for two, Mr. Blue Eyes," I murmured to myself. My client for this gig had really come through, giving me a precise time of arrival down the second at this specific airlock.

I took over the suit controls from the AI and gave a thruster pulse to bring me to a 5 m/s closure to the airlock door.

With the nine seconds until my hands could grab hold, I began laying down program after program as stealthily as possible into the local systems. The net dweller who looked after the security subnet of the station was quite good. Their firewalls, daemons, imps and other passive defense features slowed down the uptake of my hacks, but did little more than that.

He was no Nix and far from Yoko's skill, for months now I had long been able to fight both my netrunning mentors on an equal level in shallow cyberspace.

I fired a last burst of thrust, taking down my closing velocity down an easy meter per second, which my arms could easily absorb.

My hands clamped down around the hand hold rails and I stabilized myself.

A thought triggered my first hack.

The airlock interior began depressurizing.

This took a nerve wracking three minutes, but I used the time to begin laying my own daemons, viruses and hacks like a minefield for the station's dweller to stumble onto, just in case. They would stay passive and unnoticed until I needed them, with a twenty four hour lifetime before they would delete themselves.

The door mechanism sensors were isolated before I triggered their motors.

I got out of the way for the heavy airlock door to swing by me and pulled myself into the pitch dark of the interior.

My optics switched to the infrared spectrum as I didn't feel like going through the trouble of hacking the lights.

The world was rendered into the black and white of infrared, whilst I immediately began closing the door behind me.

As the airlock began to pump in air again, my hacking was already busy with the small camera facing the inner airlock door.

This was far from the sloppy streets of Night City with gang hijacked CCTV cameras. There you could get away mostly with just quickhacking the cameras into switching themselves off with no issue. That was completely different with an active elite dweller in the subnet. Switching off a cam so directly was the netrunning equivalent of blasting the horn of a truck, that there was someone up to no good that didn't want to be seen.

Nix and Yoko had quickly taught me to forget that form of sloppiness.

To true infiltrators and netrunners, you camouflaged yourself from cameras. You laid programs that were specific to your current visual profile directly into the local cache of the visual sensors, causing them to see you, but effectively ignore you. It didn't matter how sophisticated the image recognition was, you would still be invisible using the Camera Camo quickhack as I liked to call my own version of the program.

An even more advanced form, which I was still busy sorting out the kinks and bugs of, was a Disguise program, which actively turned you into someone else who was authorized to be in that space with no raised eyebrows.

The pressure was now equalized with the interior of the station and a minor hack opened the inner doors for me.

I drew my highly illegal, modified Liberty pistol and with a pull against the railing floated my way out of the airlock, scanning both sides of the cramped hallway. It was festooned with control panels, piping, valves, conduits and other engineering necessities.

My snooping through the cameras found no one close by. The closest being a borg worker in a full cyber conversion Copernicus body two floors below me. An idle passive scan told me his name, Jack Hoan, cross referenced from the station population register and that he still had twenty years of service left to work off his debts to the owners.

My mind automatically went through different ways I could either flatline or disable him if I had to.

The airlock closed and I pulled off, carefully accelerating myself down the corridor.

The map reference in my optics displayed my current position, this one was fully 3D on account of the environment. Helpfully giving me a constant marker line to find my way through the maze to my destination.

I stopped myself at the first intersection, then pulled into a corridor that went relatively upward.

Most of my attention was on ghosting every cam and sensor. A constant laying of hacks to pave my way forward.

I had to pause at the next intersection, keeping myself from rising into it. Another borg worker was cruising through the corridor now above me.

Using a cam as a jump off point, I smoothly inserted my camo hack into his optics. The Copernicus barely had a cyberdeck worth the name and it was a Seocho civilian model. My own Netwatch Netdriver deck breezed through his firewalls without even a hint of trouble and didn't trip any internal alarms.

The result was the worker didn't even turn his oddly shaped head to look at me. The optics on the Copernicus had a band scanner that provided a full 270 degree vision to the borg and he should've seen someone in a full combat EVA suit, but he just puffed out of view, using the inbuilt thrusters of his own near full mechanical body.

I moved on with a pull on the railings.

My first waypoint was reached a few minutes later when I spotted the always rotating inner mechanisms, or at least a part of it, that joined the central core of the station to the rotating section. Given my position it was like I was looking at the massive section of hyperalloy steel wall that was constantly moving on superfluid frictionless bearings the size of a freight train.

Now came the first tricky part of my infiltration - I needed to get inside the elevator shafts that went up and down inside the torus support spokes.

A quick scan showed a maintenance worker access point and with a puff of my own thrusters I made way there.

I grabbed the railing hand hold nearby and wound the link extension from my EVA suit's neck and reeled it out with my right hand.

"Suit, manipulator arm," I ordered. The AI unfurled the dextrous arm from the life support pack and I handed my gun over to it. "Defense mode."

My actual body's defense in real space covered, I shoved the link into the port.

The first automatic action my mind made was to snuff out the alert signal that someone had connected to the port at all. Then I pushed forward and began scanning local systems using partial synthtech immersion. From my left eye, I saw the dataverse of the entire station, whilst my right kept an eye on real space around me.

The local firewall here was much stronger. Not surprising, since someone fucking up here could send this specific torus' rotation into a faster spin and give everyone in it a constant 5 Gs if they wanted to. It would also potentially fuck up the entire station given enough time.

It took me nearly six real time minutes to just make my way painstakingly through the outer layer of the firewall without tripping the little traps the station's net dweller had left for me. They were good. If you could name the defense, they'd used it.

Mr. Blue Eyes had not managed to gain any data on just who's turf I was digitally stepping on, which by itself told me that it was one of those nutjobs that practically lived in cyberspace. His meat body was likely ensconced in a life support tube somewhere on the station.

It also meant that I did not want to get in a direct cyberspace confrontation with them and that stealth was the order of the day. If it meant I had to spend hours parsing through the code, then so be it.

These last few months I had made it a point to do the required netrunning for my own gigs where possible and not rely on dedicated runners, as much as that would've made my life easier.

Nearly an hour later I was through three layers of firewall and seemingly inside the local subnet but I spotted a minor fault in the environment, which clearly told me I was in a fake subnet that had been created for someone like myself to blunder around stupidly.

It took me another hour to find the port to gain further access and there I had another two firewalls to worm through.

The previous firewalls were jokes in comparison and stealthily punching through these took me another three hours. During which I also had to hack the optics of another borg worker to keep me invisible in meatspace.

I double and triple checked the systems being visualized by my synthtech interface for any discrepancy before I finally accepted that I was seeing the real thing and not another fake.

Then I found the hydraulic system for a torus spoke that was still approaching my position and carefully triggered the central shaft access hatch.

With a push of my hand and slight puffs of my suit thrusters to slow myself, I was now inches from facing the constantly moving inner wall of the spinning section. A quick calculation told me I would have exactly four and half seconds to get my entire body into the shaft or risk getting cut in half.

I maneuvered myself head first and handed over my suit thruster controls to the AI, ordering it to ignore all safety governors.

'Are you certain?' it asked in a monotone.

"Yes, do it."

'Very well.'

This potential death was but a minor manifestation of the many I had faced over the last two years. I didn't bother asking for a countdown from the AI and just steeled myself to experience one hell of an acceleration.

The instant I saw the entrance of the shaft appear from my right, I flipped the mental switch of my Sandevistan.

My perception of the world around me increased by orders of magnitude and instead of the shaft approaching at a blistering speed it was now crawling towards me.

The moment came and the AI fired every thruster my suit had.

For an agonizingly long moment, it seemed like I was going to ram myself headfirst into the moving wall. Then mere inches before my helmet would've impacted solid steel, the shaft entrance passed in front of me.

My head and shoulders passed inside and only a pure AI dedicated to this task resulted in a proper course being maintained with thruster firings so I didn't get pancaked against the side of the shaft.

I had to pull in my legs to avoid them getting effectively sliced by the entire station's central core, another trick that was simplified greatly with the Sandy.

When my speed was equalized with the spoke's spin, I finally could reach out safely to physically grab the nearest maintenance railing.

My internal Agent shut down the Sandy automatically. I immediately became aware of my heavy breathing and the usual aftershock of temporal perceptions normalizing hit me. I bore it as easy as breathing by this point. What I couldn't ignore was my right hand beginning to twitch and spasm out of my control.

"Fuck! Not now," I snarled. My left hand came round to grab the railing, just as my right hand's grip failed.

My right limb kept going epileptic in a painful manner for nearly a full four minutes before it settled down and some control returned to me.

"Will such loss of control occur again?" the Suit AI asked.

I grabbed the railing with both hands and began pulling myself down the shaft. "Possibly, it will be dealt with soon."

My next obstacle approached - an inner bulkhead door that would finally let me access an actual elevator. This one yielded to a simple stealth quickhack thanks to my earlier breach of the local subnet.

I pushed myself in carefully and began to feel the first effects of the station's centrifugal gravity, which was currently just a slight pull of barely 0.1 G towards the spinward side of the shaft.

The elevator itself was halfway down the spoke about seventy meters away from me. The bulkhead door closed above me as I began the careful hack to bring the elevator up.

Here I had to be careful to not create an obvious signal to the central computer that something was wrong with the behavior of the system.

The only reason anyone from the outer torus would take an elevator all the way up the spoke here, was if they were technicians. By the same token, it would let me traverse closer without worrying about the elevator suddenly rising and crashing into me.

I couldn't take that chance.

This gig had too much riding on it for anything to go wrong.

So I grabbed a hold of the side to arrest my very slow fall and got busy hacking.

It was another slow process, which involved finding the employee register. Then finding and creating a virtual duplicate of that employee, that I could insert into the surveillance system. Then I had to create a small accident for her, that would actually stop her from moving in real space.

This I did with a small malfunction in the automatic door as she walked out of the restroom. It essentially closed in her face, instead of opening. She lost her balance and fell backward.

In that moment, I replaced her in surveillance with the virtual duplicate, whilst I burned a ton of RAM to brute force her own firewalls and hit her with a Control hack.

I walked her right back into the toilet stall, had her lock the door and wait patiently.

My cyberdeck was really heating up now, but I had planned ahead for this moment and the hiss of external coolant flowing through my dedicated cooling 'ware nicely took care of it. Taking the heat and eventually flushing it from a dedicated reservoir installed near my neck.

I hit her with a triple combo that I could do in my sleep at this point - Memory Wipe, Reset Optics and Sonic Shock.

She began twitching and moments later collapsed into deep unconsciousness and would only wake up in nine hours.

In the meantime, I ran the virtual duplicate of Rachel Mcadams, the very attractive Blackjack table dealer for the local casino, towards the part of the station which would serve my purposes.

Then I repeated the whole process for a maintenance tech who worked the station's general HVAC on the customer facing side. Since no one really wanted a big maintenance borg in sight stomping up the carpets, he was still human with minimal external cyberware.

I had him do the job of actually sending the elevator up to meet me, then had him pretend to do some busywork on a nearby vent, before releasing him with a Memory Wipe.

When my feet finally touched down on the roof of the elevator, I was already inside its tiny subnet, keeping things looking absolutely normal to the greater system. The interior cam was looped before I triggered the maintenance hatch on its roof.

"Time to get dressed," I murmured to the suit AI.

It took the hint and fully equalized interior pressure before breaking the seals on the minimal carapace structure of the suit interior, allowing me to unzip, twist and climb out of the thing.

Now I was left only wearing the interior cooling suit and peeled myself out of that.

I fiddled with the latch release on the suit backpack, my nude body shivered in the cool air before I shut down that autonomic response with a thought.

I pulled out my designer Jinguji dress for this gig, ripping open the protective synthplast before carefully coaxing it out, leaving it to hover in the microgravity briefly.

Dressing in this situation was not easy but eventually I managed to wiggle into the extremely short, black piece of clothing and settle it properly, smoothing out all the kinks and getting all the upper metallic bits properly supporting and covering my breasts to an appropriate level. Next came the jewelry, three large gold rings on my left thigh, two rings on my left fingers and four silver necklaces, one of which was laced with a ruby. Then came the shoes, two open foot stiletto high heels that would do the job nicely of emphasizing my toned calves.

"All right, time to don my dancing shoes," I grinned, bringing up the internal program with my Agent, then triggered the still highly secret FIA metanthropic cloaking tech.

It always felt like I was being doused with slow moving ice water that also somehow left a slightly hot burn in its wake before settling into normalcy.

My HUD gave me 100% across the board as I felt my mannerisms, voice, body language and a dozen other effects settle on me as the imprint did its job.

As a last check I pulled myself over to the spacesuit's helmet and the AI helpfully mirrored the front faceplate to let me do my final check.

V the ripped, legendary bad-ass merc who'd made Night City her bitch was gone, to be replaced by the very attractive, long haired Mrs. Elaine Paigles, who was the stacked, arm candy corpo wife for her equally corpo husband.

With a nod of satisfaction, I pulled away from the helmet, "Ready, suit?"

"Ready," it said, with the exterior speakers.

I reached into the back of the suit's neck, flicked open a hidden compartment and found the chip that housed the AI. I gave it a sharp jerk and the thumb length chip emerged from its slot.

My optics did a quick scan and confirmed everything was still normal, before I carefully pushed my hair aside and slotted the chip into the open port behind my right ear.

The AI immediately sat itself down in my system, drawing minimal power and acting like it was merely a brief visitor to the 'apartment' that was my body's systems and personal area network.

"Comfortable, Suit?"

"It is acceptable," it said immediately.

I grabbed a handhold and my pistol before pulling myself through the maintenance hatch and into the elevator cabin properly. "Burn it."

"Signal sent," said Suit.

I closed the hatch just as a brief blinding flash heralded the self-destruct incineration of all the equipment that had made my spacewalk possible. Within seconds all that was left would be trace elements and scorch marks.

With my feet finally touching down on a soft carpet, a thought to my Agent had my upper right thigh split open up to reveal the full cybernetic interior, which had just enough space for my iron. When it was settled in its holster slot, it automatically pulled the weapon in and closed everything up, the synthskin there making a perfect seal again.

To any scan it would just look like I had two full cyber legs with fortified ankles. When in fact, thanks to the internal scanjack system, it was the perfect accessory for smuggling a weapon into a very secure zone.

I sent a command to the elevator to go down into the hotel proper, whilst also pushing into the greater 'net, finding the guest list and linking my current digital and physical presence into the system.

Gravity increased slowly as I went down and when I could properly walk, I pushed myself directly below the elevator's tiny cam, right in its blindspot, before releasing the loop to show the actual live feed.

Finally, the elevator car reached the bottom and I felt the station's 0.8G of simulated gravity in full.

The doors opened and I casually stepped out into Torus 4 of the Crystal Palace Orbital Hotel.

"Showtime."

---

The Crystal Palace was also affectionately called the Las Vegas of Space and like it's planet bound counterpart, was hotel, casino, entertainment, low-grav pools, spas, luxury apartments, concert venues, drone racing circuit, parks, tennis courts and even had a faithful recreation of an idyllic white sand beach, complete with waves.

I had been a Corpo for most of my life in Arasaka, playing the deadly game of corporate counterintelligence but the level of luxury and exclusivity here was the elite of the 1%. I would've needed to climb half a dozen ranks higher than my former unlamented boss Jenkins to even have a shot of coming casually to this place for a holiday or to even be assigned to work here for Arasaka.

Now I was walking through an artificial park filled with carefully cultivated plants, small trees, grass, all of it illuminated through overhead windows where carefully moderated sunlight was beamed through. Arasaka had artificial ecologies in most of their major HQ buildings around the world, but this was on a whole other level. It was like the Garden of Eden in a can. Not surprising when these plants were vital to keeping everyone breathing in the Torus. The whole spectacle would be enough to normally have me gaping like a tourist, but my behavioral imprint of Elaine smoothly overwrote those to make my body language into a casual strut.

Most of the other people in Torus 4 were either tourists gaping in amazement or people who actually lived and worked in the Palace, taking a much needed break from their busy schedules to eat something and relax. Just seeing this also would've made the old me very envious. At Arasaka, I had usually eaten within my ultra secure tiny office and had food delivered straight to my floor. Here at the Crystal Palace, it seemed they actually allowed breaks where you would leave your office entirely. Of course, it could just be that since there was only the harsh vacuum of space outside, this was an allowance for people to not go stir crazy.

I passed a few relaxing Corpos who were giving two nearby Arasaka suits a weary stink eye. Most of the biggest corps of Earth had offices on the Crystal Palace, just like my hometown of Night City. The difference being that no one could afford to have their own army to look after their assets here. No fighting or hijinks were tolerated, even between Arasaka and Militech, who were inches away from a de facto hot war on Earth.

Orbital Air, the general managers of the entire station, had full rights and means to banish any corp lock, stock and barrel. Anyone committing crime on Crystal Palace would usually be shown the airlock. Whether they gave you a space suit, a shuttle or neither depended on the severity of the crime.

I kept a weather eye on the time, judging how long I had to just sightsee, as the lush park area gave way to specialist boutiques and shops. Torus 4 alone had a circumference of just under 14 km with nine floors and I could easily get lost in just the shopping that was to be had here.

The persona of Elaine knew the Palace well, so I had to act as if it was all old potatoes. My Agent did its usual bang up job of navigating me to my destination via Augmented Reality.

Getting from one part of the Torus to another was done by more local elevators, tram tubes and liberal usage of standing conveyor belts in the long hallways, as if the Crystal Palace was one giant airport. Theoretically, the furthest you'd have to travel within a Torus was seven kilometers and walking that could mean over an hour wasted.

The other difference to get used to was the general population of the Palace. As a former Arasaka suit based out of Night City and during childhood, I'd seen quite a lot of Europe and Japan, but here I was experiencing an entirely new melting pot of humanity.

The station was by now over sixty-seven years old and had survived the Fourth Corporate War, which included a hot war in low-earth orbit that had seen nearly everyone else lose their orbital assets. The European Space Agency had managed to defend it with the help of the Highriders and for nearly a decade, the station residents had to survive completely on their own with no supplies or help coming from Earthside.

The Palace of today was highly cosmopolitan, with reps and embassies from nearly every major corp and nation on Earth. It was the place to go for the rich and famous. Almost everywhere I looked were people with the best clothes, stunning looks and sporting cyber and bioware that my old Ripper could buy his own shop with twice over. I had sunk over two million eddies into my own body by now and I'd be considered middling at best to these people.

In sharp contrast, were the Highrider and Crystal Palace natives. They were always dressed practically in jumpsuits with dozens of filled pockets, had very minimal cyberware and preferred to use bioware. Their hair was kept in short, almost brutal styles, to easily accommodate their vacsuit helmets. The highriders always had hard collars around their necks, which were just the collapsible form of helmets that could deploy in seconds to keep them alive in case of a hull breach.

I took my seat in a tram tube car, folding my legs and watched as a couple that oozed eddies, got up from their seats to increase the distance between them and a tall highrider that had taken a seat nearby.

The highrider, wearing a white skinsuit and harness festooned with tools, didn't even acknowledge them. He pulled out a tablet and started tapping furiously on it with a scowl.

The last passengers rushed in as the door closed, making for rather cramped conditions.

The tram burst into a rapid movement, shooting through the transport tube.

I had three minutes to kill and endure my legs and breasts getting ogled from across me by a rich corpo teen. So I simply looked to the side and kept an eye on the local subnets that I was passing through and monitoring that the virtual cyber duplicate was behaving normally. In further precaution, I was also dropping Sniffers, hack traps, imps, worms and daemons, all of whom would remain dormant in the subnets and general cyberspace of the Palace.

It was also interesting to note that the flavor and look of cyberspace was notably different from what I had grown used to in Night City. Whether it was just because of my own subjective bias in interpreting the data or there was an actual physical cause behind it, I couldn't say for certain. Cyberspace in Night City was an infinite shifting red landscape, with data structures, programs, viruses, hacks and so on usually appearing in a variety of blue hues. In the Crystal Palace, my brain interpreted the cyber landscape in shades of white, with programs and data rendering in gold.

"Section 12, arriving," said a highly enthusiastic female voice from the map screen above my head.

The rapid decel from over 160 kph had me bump into my neighbor on the next seat; another highrider, but he was dressed almost like a corpo, the only concession to his heritage being the vac collar around his neck.

"Sorry about that," I sighed, standing up and grabbing a handhold.

"Na problem, pretty one. Nice runnin' ya doin," he said, his dark skinned face stretching into a wide smile. He was speaking in The Word, the Highrider language, which was a mixture of the Niger-Congo family of languages, mixed with French, German and Japanese loan words and structure. My autotranslation soft rendered his words into understandable West Coast English, though with a heavy accent.

"Saw that did you?" I asked idly, already queuing up a bunch of offensive hacks to dump on him, whilst passive scanning and analyzing any cyberware and rehearsing lethal and non-lethal unarmed strikes to use.

"Ya, you're good, as I said," he held up his palms in a clear peace gesture. It took me a moment to pinpoint him in the local subnet and I perceived his avatar - a simple inoffensive ball with a smiley face painted on it. "You want de IP for local runner club?"

"Might as well," I nodded and his avatar sprouted an arm which flicked data at me.

I caught it in an isolation program and gave him an idle wave as I joined the throng of people walking out of the tram.

A few minutes' walk finally brought me to my first destination.

Set within an idyllic park was a small office building that was currently being leased by Utopian Corporation.

They were a ninety year old company specializing in pharmacology, nanotech and a general manufacturer. They were always small-fry as far as I knew. They barely had over a 100k employees in this day and age, spread across London, LA and Rome. They had no offices in Night City, but they did on occasion try and poach low level Arasaka employees from the technology divisions.

That they even had an office on the Crystal Palace was something of a relic from the 4th Corporate War, but they had enough money, influence and assets to keep the place going. They had been able to consistently renew their 20 year lease agreement on the very lucrative property. They had also consistently fended off buyout and hostile takeovers from major players in Europe and the Americas.

This was a company that had suspiciously deep pockets or silent major investors and backers in the background that kept it afloat and independent.

Mr. Blue Eyes wanted something Utopia had recently developed that the company was being rather reluctant in selling, even when he had apparently offered millions of eddies for it. Now he figured it was cheaper and quicker just to hire me to liberate it, along with a number of other odds and ends from other residents of the Palace.

I approached the front doors, scanning the exterior and found the usual assortment of security devices: cameras, visible and hidden, high res motion sensors, IFF, hidden Militech branded turrets, all state of the art. Armored steel shutters were ready to fall down over all doors and windows to turn this little building into a fortress.

The reception had the typical neo-minimalist style that was all the rage for corps these days, though Utopian at least went for a dark green palette to their walls with plentiful potted plants sprinkled around the place. It would be pleasing to the eye, if they hadn't sculpted the foliage at a genetic level to mirror the tree that formed their corp logo - making it look like a cauliflower crossbred with a mini-tree.

I had barely taken two steps into the reception when I saw and felt an active scan play all over my body from a visible sensor behind the ultra-attractive receptionist.

In Night City, she would've been all over the front pages of screamsheets and Jinguji would have her as a frontwoman, but somehow here she was, working a menial job on the Crystal Palace. She wore a red knee-length skirt and top that flattered, accentuated and just drew the eye in. High cheeks, delicate face, smoldering green eyes and makeup that I immediately made a mental note to add to my repertoire. My reflexive scan even spotted pheromone bioware that my Agent confirmed was very subtly affecting me.

"Hello Mrs. Paigles. Welcome to Utopian," she said with a dimpled smile. "My name is Isla. How can I help you?"

"I'm a representative for Night Corp," I said, opening the palm of my hand in her direction, broadcasting the ID data I had received from Mr. Blue Eyes.

Her optics flashed slightly as she visibly showed she'd received the handshake and data. She worked on her own terminal behind her thin transparent desk briefly. Her whole mannerism went from unctuously seductive to neutral in an instant, "Confirmed. What is the purpose of your visit?"

"We're looking to enquire if Utopian would be amenable to enter into contract negotiations for a simple regular purchase of your products."

"I see," Isla nodded, her optics flashed again. "I've forwarded your request to Director Mitchell. Our local sales department head. He's currently very busy, but his schedule opens up for a brief meeting in fifty minutes. Are you amenable to waiting?"

"Yes."

"Then please have a seat," she gestured to the numerous couches facing each other in a small lounge arrangement to one side of the reception area.

"Thank you," I nodded and took a seat on the couch that would let me see the entrance and keep an eye on her.

I engaged in a scan of the entire space, finding cameras and other immediate access points. All the cams in here were tiny and hidden, but provided more than enough throughput for my purposes. However, those were the obvious infiltration points and any netrunner they employed for network security would be watching those like a hawk.

My scan found the hidden Militech turret in the ceiling above my head and I crossed my legs, leaning back to get comfortable. Then I engaged a little program to flash my optics as if I was getting a call, which included simulating an outside connection.

My view of local cyberspace in my left eye now began slowly building up a map of the subnet that Utopia used.

Then when I was ready, I manifested properly.

My avatar for this run was a simple humanoid agglomeration of infernal flame, with two sinister glowing eyes.

I moved forward and double checked my stealth programs were running effectively, keeping the bandwidth usage even and sending no spikes that would alert my opposition.

The data fortress that represented Utopia Corp's servers came into view as a giant golden sphere that hovered over the infinite white gray of cyberspace. Just seeing that was a bloody annoyance and felt like someone had slapped me in the face.

Ever since I had fought for my life in the old Militech Cynosure facility hidden underneath Night City's Pacifica district, every damn data fortress I visualized followed the same structural pattern as the Cynosure AI Core. My hope that netrunning in the Crystal Palace would allow me to move on from that subconscious construct was seemingly in vain and I had been a fool to think it would make a difference.

That trauma had tattoo'd itself on my psyche and wouldn't go away.

Six months of time had made no difference and I still had gonk crazy nightmares, where my subconscious had me fighting Adam fucking Smasher whilst simultaneously that blasted Cerberus Combat Mech hunted me in the bowls of that place.

Don't think about it, Valerie, don't think about it. Not now.

In cyberspace, I floated forward carefully, stopping just at the edge of the perceived detection range of the defenses and firewalls that surrounded the fortress.

All around the surface of this datafortress was patrolling daemons, imps, dormant viruses and worms wriggling around and waiting to infect the first person stupid enough to try to breach the defenses.

I began a slow orbit around it and carefully scanned for gaps or weaknesses.

Whatever elite 'runner was behind these defenses was not screwing around. Nearly everything around the fortress was absolutely lethal and it was just short of being considered a solid block of Black ICE. The only non-lethal stuff was dedicated to sniffing out who would dare to try to breach the fortress, which was something Utopian definitely wanted to know and pursue. That was rather kind of them, in comparison to most corps who outright killed any runner no questions asked for trespassing.

I manifested a junk data worm, sending it wriggling away from me into the distance, where it disappeared.

A minute later it returned from random direction and impacted the defenses, shattering into a bunch of random garbage data with random things like a Crystal Palace screamsheet issue from three years ago, old NUSA market data and a random selection of braindance smut.

The firewall blocked everything cold and the closest worms and viruses corrupted the data in very nasty ways before it burst into a nonsense code that was swiftly cleaned up by a defragger.

It had achieved nothing of consequence, but it did let me see the defenses in action and how everything was put together. More importantly, it also showed me that the runner was quite trusting of his work and didn't see the need to come out of the fortress whenever something pinged the defenses. It was generally considered a non-event since just by nature of cyberspace that you regularly had junk data hitting fortresses, it could be a simple email with the wrong address or an incorrect network ping.

I kept at it, acutely aware that the clock was ticking and that I couldn't afford to get into a direct fight with this dweller.

My cyberware and body had been tuned and refined since that fateful heist for that bloody gonk Dexter Deshawn. It had seen me through the worst of Night City, including Adam Smasher. Not to mention further specifically prepared for this gig at the Crystal Palace. My internal cooling reservoir, a piece of cyberware that I had collaborated with Nix on designing and had built myself, wouldn't be able to dump heat from my cyberdeck for long enough in a typical netrunner duel. Not if my opponent was jacked into a full chair, cooling suit and had tons of hardware behind him.

I had to remain absolutely invisible in cyberspace and trigger no alarms or outright destroy the daemons in my way.

I threw another junk program into another part of the fortress defenses, mapping more of them, before taking a snapshot to begin compiling a cohesive picture.

There had to be a weakness or approach to use here, no defense was perfect.

It was only as I threw another bit of junk at the defenses and watched the defragger working that I hit upon a moment of inspiration.

My hands waved in the air of cyberspace, bringing up three of my best infiltrator daemons, Ghost Dream, Cerulean Prowl and Tiger Stack.

My mind visualized them as blurry masses of ever shifting code that were assembled into shapes related to their names. Ghost Dream being a spectral hazy man with radiant blue eyes, Prowl took the form of one of my childhood cats and Tiger Stack looking exactly like a Siberian Tiger I had seen in an old encyclopedia.

With a thought, I brought up configuration tabs for each daemon and hastily scrolled through their code, making additions and adjusting parameters on the fly.

I was so glad that at this point I didn't even need to use my virtual hands to do this anymore, otherwise it would've been impossible in the time I had available.

As it was, it took me nearly twenty-three precious minutes, all the while in real space, I picked up a screamsheet from the table in front of the couch to pretend to read.

Finally, I was ready and compressed my infiltrator daemons into my junk programs as a shell, before flinging all three at the fortress.

It was a risk, but I had no choice. I could only hope that my opponent was used enough to junk data impacts that he'd not bat an eye at three of them hitting simultaneously.

I held my non-existent breath in cyberspace as I watched the impact of my little surprise on the Fortress…

… yes!

My daemons had emerged successfully beyond the defenses, cloaking themselves before the defragger could get to work and I had access.

I 'cloaked' my avatar, which was essentially just de-manifesting but keeping my senses centered around an arbitrary point in cyberspace. My position shifted instantly as I slipped right into the fortress, hovering just above my three infiltrators.

Within the fortress, I was confronted with the typical interpretation runners had of a database - a seemingly infinite physical server farm, but my own unique take had me seeing it as an ever-shifting multi floor space. Naturally, there were patrol daemons here too and these ones were shifting forms of black and white code - at first they were humanoid, then they became multi-limbed in a way that reminded me of octopi.

That was not good. That meant the runner had adaptive coding in these things.

I had to quickly adjust my own daemons to account for that, as it was possible our collective stealth in the fortress could just as quickly become useless.

In realspace, I made sure to turn the page of the screamsheet, lest I give away the fact that I was a bit too invested in reading about the upcoming 2078 model of the Rayfield Caliburn. I despaired at definitely not being able to buy the sweet looking ride at the moment… before pushing that thought away.

No thinking about the future now, Valerie.

It also let me spot a slight twitch on the lid cover that protected the Militech turret in the ceiling above me. As if it had wanted to fully deploy but something had intervened and stopped it from doing so.

That…

In cyberspace I sent my daemons to work immediately, whilst I slipped out of the fortress server and into neutral space outside it, then surged towards the attached datasphere that represented all the systems of Utopia's physical office building.

'Fuck.'

Another runner was hacking the defenses, trying to bring the entire building under their control.

The local dweller instantly saw it and began fighting defense.

Instantly, I knew I was watching two elites fighting each other. The speed and quality of their attacks, the daemons in use, how quickly firewalls rose and fell under the onslaught of either side.

I had come a long way from just being a cookie cutter, street quickhack slinger and could probably jump right in if I had my gear at home backing me up. However, with only the custom cooling cyberware in my body to keep my cyberdeck's heat under control, I would only last a few minutes at best before having to retreat. My only advantage was surprise and that I knew my Netwatch deck could eat both of theirs for breakfast in terms of performance.

The only question now was this cyber attack only a prelude to something more in real space?

Normally, my answer would be 'hell no'. The Crystal Palace's physical security was legendary and was the whole reason for my little spacewalk stunt in the first place.

My instincts were screaming something else at me.

If I could do this, why not someone else?

The Utopian dweller had home field advantage and looked to be gaining the upper hand now. That was good, they were distracted and so I pushed my own daemons in the data fortress to move quicker in finding the big prize.

Then the attacking runner shifted tactics, queuing so many attacks that his brain should've been cooking, yet there was no interruption, break, loss of data fidelity or disconnect. It was suicide and yet… the attack just continued.

I looked closely at the battle in cyberspace and finally caught the issue. This wasn't just one runner attacking Utopian, it was two of them. Two elite runners that had somehow managed to make themselves appear as a single attacker. Everyone in cyberspace had a certain 'flavor' or 'signature' to their appearance, coding and just the way their minds interacted with it. This duo had done their best to seem as one, but I now saw the differing flows and shifts of data.

The Utopian dweller was clearly panicking at this point and scrambled to keep up, throwing defenses that had to be pushing him to the red line as well.

He was going to lose.

The first thing to go was the security cameras - the visible ones in the reception froze and their little red lights winked out.

That wasn't good news and I began toning down my portable synth-tec interface resolution and other settings to free up as much RAM as possible.

I turned another page and casually unfolded my legs to get my feet properly next to each other.

The front doors of the reception opened to admit a tall man in a typical corpo minimalist suit that you saw in thousands of office drones all over the Crystal Palace. He was very well built and bulged the suit somewhat, yet he wore it well and didn't seem uncomfortable in it. His hard blue eyes surveyed the reception, locking on the stunning receptionist with a visible smirk on his chiseled, perfect features before his eyes found me.

My eyes met his briefly before looking back down into my screamsheet and I could see him visibly dismiss me as unimportant, before he approached the front desk.

All this happened as the Utopian dweller lost control of the Militech turret and the armored shutters.

Isla tried to use the scanner, but frowned into her terminal screen as it clearly didn't want to respond. I spotted the instant she realized something was very wrong. Her body slightly twitching but getting herself admirably under control for a civilian, either that or she had cyberware that helped regulate emotional response.

"Welcome to Utopian, sir," she said with a nod. "My name is Isla. How can I help you?"

The 'corpo' didn't respond immediately but eventually smiled, "Yes, you can help me."

The doors opened and admitted two men and a single woman, also dressed similarly. The story was the same, corpos, minimal visible cyberware, well built, bland expressions on their faces.

The shutters slammed down on all the windows and the front doors shut, going into lockdown before a shutter also fell on that. The Militech turret popped out and immediately aimed for Isla.

All four mercs pulled out collapsable shock batons that unfolded into their hands.

The female merc blurred with speed as she activated a Sandevistan and emerged right over me, holding the baton's end right near my neck.

"You can both, not move a muscle."


888888888888888888888888888888888

A/N: Here's my new story! Coz I'm impatient, here's my continuation of CP2077.

Chapter 2 has already boarded the Patreon.

 

[Keiran Halcyon]

A/N: The gig continues... Thanks to Patrons and Super Patrons who are awesome chooms for supporting this author.


Chapter 2

There were moments in the life of a mercenary where you found yourself doing and experiencing events that strained credulity.

Fighting a hacked Militech Chimera experimental tank alongside the President of the NUSA herself with only a smart submachine gun, an assault rifle and quickhacks was one of those moments.

I had to remind myself that I was not V, Smasher's Bane or any of the ridiculous monikers the merc community had foisted on me at the moment, as I stared down the length of the shock baton leveled at my face.

My behavior synced faceplate and related systems that was part of the metanthropic cloaking neatly intercepted my instinctive reactions. Instead I felt my current face making a perfect expression of fright; wide doe eyes, pupil dilation, a full body twitch, gasp and raising my empty hands. Even my subconscious body language on a microexpression scale and hormones were tweaked to simulate it to even the most thorough of optical scanners and analysis programs that might be lurking in the on-board Agents of my current opponents.

I could even see in cyberspace how my current identity was being referenced by this crew's duo of netrunners as they were still battling the local dweller.

They found only what they were meant to find. If they had devoted their full efforts into interrogating and scanning my digital ID, they might have found a gap or hole in the cover with enough time, but they didn't have that.

My own passive analysis swept over the merc crew and my Agent delivered matching IDs from the Crystal Palace guest register. They had all boarded legally, their tickets paid in full and visas good for two weeks. Their shock batons were all Arasaka EB Alpha models and the serial number that my optics were able to get a good view of, told me these actually belonged to Europol - the station's actual police force.

So they somehow raided the cops own armory and without kicking up a fuss at all or Europol had swept it all under the rug.

Now I was facing a quandary. My own hacking was being neatly covered by this bunch and my sniffers needed more time to find the data package that Mr. Blue Eyes wanted.

If they were also after the same info, then things were about to get very interesting in the next few minutes.

Nothing from the twin netrunners had yet given a clue about their true target, so I had to do the most difficult thing when under the proverbial gun of this merc crew - wait, analyze and remain Mrs. Elaine Paigles.

I could begin doing some offensive prep though and began planning and queuing up hacks to drop, in addition to mentally rehearsing my actual physical assault.

In cyberspace, the battle was entering the final phases.

The dweller was still fighting back, but they were beginning to see the writing on the wall. I could play on this level if I had been encased in my own netrunner lair in NC and could've probably evened the odds in this fight if it had been in my best interest to help.

The question now is what would the twins do once they were victorious. Would they fry the dweller with Black ICE or simply lock him up in a Prison Box program? The latter would be preferable, but I had felt some of Yoko's prisons and some of them were hell in a box.

The seconds ticked by and the lobby of Utopian felt like we had all been slapped with a Freeze Body quickhack. Huh, that would be a nice evolution of the good ol' Cripple Movement - should get to work on that. The twitching and nervous jitters from the receptionist and myself were the only real movement in the room. My Agent immediately updated the mercs to definitely have some form of muscle strength lacing and precision movement soft' - handy if you had to wait for hours looking mean at some club as a bouncer or were part of the military.

Finally, the last firewall was breached and the local dweller was presented with the choice every netrunner dreaded.

He still had time to actually pull himself out of cyberspace, go back to meatspace and his body that was jacked in somewhere in a shielded strong room within the Utopian building.

It was an unfair loss, there was no concept of bushido in the 'Net outside of organized runner clubs who dueled. It would depend on his contract with Utopian really…

There was a sudden void in cyberspace…

Fuck! He booked it.

Well, I couldn't blame him really. Facing the music from this duo of netrunners clearly didn't appeal in the slightest.

I caught the slight twitch of a smile from the lead merc.

Happy now are you? I passively scanned the EM profile coming from him and found the com net frequency that the mercs were operating on.
The encryption was good, but it just so happened that Nix had cracked and 'solved' this one two weeks ago. It was Zetatech proprietary, their latest stuff even, which made it a priority for every 'runner worth their chrome to find ways around.

I delegated my Agent to listen in and analyze, my attention was almost completely taken up by the need to remain stealthy within the Utopian servers.

My new enemies had barged in with the subtlety of a Chimera tank on a rampage.

True, they had the place for themselves now, but really?

My own sniffers and daemons were finally closing in on the prize.

It was about fucking time!

Utopian bastards hadn't made it easy to find, using obscure codenames and jargon speak to hide the data, but Mr. Blue Eyes had given me enough to penetrate this final layer of primitive yet effective security.

It was called Project DWARF STAR. What it was or did, I had no idea. Wasn't my business.

My daemon grabbed it, copied it, then swiftly began to encrypt it within its own 'body'.

I now faced the decision of retreating or to keep snooping and see what these mercs were here for.

It took me no more than a moment to make the decision. Ordering all my programs to leave as quickly and subtly as possible with the bounty, but keeping one disposable stealth sniffer within the data fortress that would act as my eyes.

Mr. Blue Eyes would definitely be interested if these mercs were also after DWARF STAR.

My programs returned to me with the data loot and I immediately shunted everything to an auxiliary data drive within my own body, which I immediately isolated by a physical air gap shunt that clicked open.

There was no way for it to be remotely hacked and taken from me now.

Back in the data fortress, the twin netrunners were definitely getting closer to me and consequently the data.

If someone like Mr. Blue Eyes wanted this, then it stood to reason it would be on the radar of others.

Time within cyberspace could be funny sometimes, but it was the most universal experience for most to feel some form of dilation, as the data streams spilled over your consciousness. If it was mostly compressed and with a few tweaks, you could theoretically pull off spending a week of perceived time within a few hours in real space. That was especially the case if you were observing human memory.

I've heard scuttlebutt on the Runner BBS feeds about battles that could take days of dilated time.

As the twin runners barreled into my view within the fortress, it almost felt like my Sandy had activated, especially because I still had my right eye taking in real space.

Their avatars looked like gigantic identical, classically shaped genies.

Both were lurid red sinuous masses of densely clustered light with representations of data falling off their bodies like water splashing off them. Their upper bodies were idealized male forms, with muscles and curves for days, which blended into an ephemeral snake-like body. They had faces that had comically exaggerated chins set on manly jaws and a permanent five o'clock shadow and balefully glowing red eyes.

They zoomed closer with the speed of an eyeblink and were now looming over the server cluster that represented DWARF STAR.

"Ah ha! Found it, M00NL16H7! Told you it was this way."

"Yeah, yeah, B3H3M07H, whatever. Now hurry up and get the stuff. You can bet 0NYX is alerting Utopian HQ through a dedicated hardline that we can't stop."

It was finally nice to have names for everyone involved.

I also sent out a simple sniffer into the greater cyberspace of the Crystal Palace with the goal to bring me everything it could on Moonlight and Behemoth.

The local BBS feeds and especially the Runner Club, yielded the most data.

They were known quantities there, with a formidable rep and apparently a client list which often fought in vicious bidding wars for their services. There was no indication or any hint of the merging trick they had pulled to defeat Onyx, which was not really surprising in retrospect, given its nature as a trump card.

In netrunner duels, they rarely lost, featuring a 83 to 5 win loss ratio for Moonlight and a 93 to 10 for Behemoth.
Now the question was, do I fight these guys to prevent them from also getting the data?

Mr. Blue Eyes did not pay me to fight a duo of runners, so the answer from my own perspective was simple. If he wanted exclusivity he would've asked me to go scorched earth and deep clean the data on my way out.

I could go nuclear and kill both of them if it came down to it.

"Uh, choom, we've got a problem," Moonlight gestured with his hands and a slice of virtual data emerged from the server and morphed into a holoscreen.

Behemoth took one look and his face scowled, "It's already been copied! Like just a few minutes ago!"

Damn, my daemon could've kept that little fact from registering in the data fortress, but that was a foundation level system of the entire place and would've taken much longer to influence.

"Which means another runner beat us to it," Moonlight said darkly, his eyes flashed as he looked around.

I saw sniffer programs practically explode from his avatar, going in every conceivable direction.

It was a rather brute force approach to the problem of detection, throwing every kind of shit against a wall and seeing what stuck. It was lacking finesse and subtlety but compensated with sheer variation which made it extremely difficult to evade but not impossible. My current Netwatch cyberdeck was made to be the top dog, it depended on me to wield the katana it gave me properly.

Both me and my stealth sniffer 'dodged' the probes, switching sectors and positions in the fortress as quickly as we could comprehend the avenues of attack shooting towards us.

"Anything?" Behemoth looked very preoccupied, judging by his avatar and bandwidth rate, he was bulking himself up with attack daemons and hacks.

"Not yet, but they have to be here!"

"Could they be a second Utopian runner? One that's kept off the books."

"No, they wouldn't touch that data. Not if they valued their jobs or their lives. Not to mention, they would've helped Onyx before we kicked his ass. We've got competition, brother."

"Then find them already! The client is paying for no one else to get this."

Interesting, just what does Utopian have that's causing this much fuss? It was almost tempting to poke my nose into DWARF STAR and see.

What would be more interesting was also to see who wanted it and didn't think that sharing was on the table. This reeked of some rival corp that got wind of it and wanted all the potential profits for themselves. Would that be worth something to Mr. Blue Eyes?

Yes, it would, but actually getting who the client was would require me to get nasty and that meant exposure.

Then the inevitable happened, I got tagged by a sniffer program.

I was furious with myself, there I go, getting greedy again. For fuck's sake, Valerie.

"Ah ha! There you are!"

I materialized my avatar.

The design I had gone for on this gig, was a giant, ghostly white humanoid with clear female characteristics. In real space terms, it would've been ten feet tall and within cyberspace I was rendered to just about match the size of Moonlight and Behemoth.

"Ooh, spooky. So who do we have here? Never seen you before…" said Moonlight with an eager delight, rubbing his hands together in anticipation.

That was the problem with avatars in cyberspace, you could customize them all you want, but elements from your subconscious always influenced it. No avatar of mine would ever materialize without appearing in some way referencing a ghost or ghost adjacent concept. As if my subconscious mind was constantly reminding me, 'Yes, V, you've died and come back, only to face a new kind of death.'

A death that all my efforts have only postponed so far…

My Agent pinged me with an alert, the behavior sync of my face plate was getting strained by another fucking seizure. This time my left hand wanted to go berserk and it would surely cause the lovely merc with her shock baton on my neck in real space to give me a nasty shock.

Fuck.

Not fucking now!

I couldn't fight these two conventionally. They would also try to stop me from leaving, I had their full attention and they would trace me straight back to my spot on the couch in the Utopian lobby, right under the figurative noses of their merc squad.
The spike of pain of a migraine from hell also chose this moment to flare up in response.

A quick thought to my Agent and my Pain Editor cyberware got to work. Not the best thing to do, but under the circumstances there was no other choice.

"Anyone home? You deaf, girl?" asked Behemoth. "Who are you? It's just called being polite before we get down to business kicking your ass."

I spotted their tracer program radiate outward despite their best efforts at concealment. My concentration and focus had recovered just enough to evade at this point.

"Wow, okay, she's good, careful bro," Moonlight warned.

"Seriously? Think some nobody can-"

"Hey, she just eluded my Spectra, no gonk off the street can do that."

The time for evasiveness was over. I couldn't match them directly in terms of hardware, but wasn't I in the system core of Utopian's data fortress? None of us at the moment were hiding behind preset firewalls beyond those that existed on a personal level.

I sent a subtle ping to the nearest server cluster and a simple request, addressed to the Utopian dweller. He might not be in cyberspace at the moment, but that didn't mean he wasn't watching from a screen.

It wasn't a second later that I received a ping in response and an answer.

'Yes, fuck 'em up if you can. - Onyx'

Just like that, every server in my sight subtly changed color from the adamantine silver to a soft green. And just like that the entire Utopian infrastructure became mine as I received permissions that sunk into my avatar.

"Oh shit!"

My first attack program manifested as a blaze of digital dark red fire that reminded me of Blackwall's various manifestations. I scowled at the sight and double checked my systems.

Both my opponents barely got junk data shields up to take the hit for them.

My three attack daemons manifested beside me and two charged their avatars down, whilst the third remained at my side and fired a storm of attacks that looked like smart tracer bullets that raced into the simulated space above our heads.

I was acting like a general now, offloading my programs and making use of Utopian servers to take the load and heat from manifesting in me.

My two opponents barely managed to stay ahead of my attacks, their evasions and data shields were adequate, but it was clear they were used to always being on the offensive and doing their merged trick. Separately, their fighting form was sloppy and they had yet to even send anything offensive my way. It made me wonder if their stats from the Runner Club were due to their merging trick and no one had yet caught on to it.

Now they rushed at each other.

"No," I declared.

I manifested a data shredder, which scythed through the space between them, visualized as a dark red beam of death.

They backtracked through sectors frantically, only to meet my melee daemons bristling with hacks, traces, defrags and other assorted nastiness dangling from their sharp fingers.

They dodged, weaved and threw defrags that took the form of data spheres that shot forward.

My ranged daemon threw another storm of attacks into cyberspace, which shot up and rained upon my opponents.

They were so busy shielding and fighting for their digital existence in the fortress, they didn't notice me releasing a worm from the right foot of my avatar. It fell to the construct's floor and vanished from sight.

Moonlight tried to release his own daemon, just about managing whilst desperately shielding himself.

I burned an entire server worth of RAM, gesturing with my avatar's right hand.

The enemy daemon was encased in a tinted red transparent cube, boxing it in before viruses shot from every direction inward and caused it to explode with out of control data replication. A flick of my avatar's hand for extra visual effect and the whole cube was utterly deleted.

He gaped at the display and I had to remind myself that I was technically a foreigner here in the Crystal Palace. The cyberscape of Night City was its own beast, just like its real space streets, only much meaner and even less policed. NC Netwatch only intervened when real systemic fundamental threats emerged. They considered me to be one of those, but had finally stopped sending their agents to die at my hands. The former NC branch director had been fired when he couldn't hide the skyrocketing bodycount and they finally sent someone with a brain to parley.

I smirked as one my daemons scored a hit on Behemoth, his entire avatar flashed as my program went to work.

"To disconnect or not to disconnect, that is the question," I taunted him, sending my voice ringing through the fortress. "Only a matter of time before my trace gets you."

"Fuck you!"

He held up two middle fingers at me, at the same time releasing attack programs from them that scythed through cyberspace towards my avatar.

"How crude," I tutted.

The offensive programs spent themselves on my outer defenses of an invisible junk data barrier. The viruses saw a straight path to me, then suddenly found themselves gorging and replicating on everything from cat videos to the latest yellow screamsheets filled with conspiracy theories.

"That's bullshit!" Moonlight gasped.

Really? Hiding your barriers was just common practice among NC's runners.

I shrugged and released a defrag beam attack that I turbocharged with another server's worth of RAM.

The beams appeared in a grid matrix pattern in three dimensions that shot down towards the twins from every direction.

"Holy fuck!"

They had no choice but to cocoon themselves in replicating shields, devoting every bit of their own bandwidth to the task.

The defrag beams eventually popped through them with no more effort than a finger encountering a soap bubble.

Both could be very glad that I was not in a bloodthirsty mood.

I released a stealth program from my avatar's foot, a little bit of further insurance.

My daemons pounced, managing two full blown hits on both of them.

A flick of my fingers and my minions vanished.

"Gentlemen, you have two choices now, leave and retreat to safety or continue this fight and I find your location in real space."

They knew the latter threat for what it was. It meant I could broadcast their location to every interested party I wanted or even sell it to the highest bidder.

"Fuck, fine! You win."

Their avatars vanished.

I laughed and gestured with my avatar's hands.

A wall of virtual fire swept out and promptly ran into both of them as they tried to be sneaky. Their cloaking program was compromised by my broad spectrum sniffer and this time they truly retreated with their figurative tails between their legs.

Of course, that was when the inevitable happened.

My avatar was promptly boxed in with barely visible panes of blue, my wonderful access to the Utopian server resources vanished - the access codes all changed and reset. I checked my network pathing and sure enough Onyx was trying to truly trap me in the data fortress, to prevent my disconnect and keep me tethered like a fly in amber.

I saw the server infrastructure around me pulse and in front of my prison the avatar of Onyx appeared.

He was painfully ordinary, appearing as only a slightly idealized human wearing a netrunner cooling suit in red with silver trimmings with the Utopian logo stenciled on it. That was always the problem with long term corpo 'runners; they were eventually molded into just another cog in the machine and it reflected in their mindset, which was mirrored into cyberspace. Some corps even had rules on what runner avatars had to look like and it was clear Utopian was also one of those.

"No gratitude for saving your bacon, I see," I had my avatar speak, using a random voice emulation, that for this occasion chose a Texan accent.

"Nothing personal… Aspect [45P3C7]. You may have helped beat off those two yonos, but it doesn't change the fact that you're also a kleptoid in my data fortress! What did you take?"

"Shouldn't you know that? Oh, right, still a bit preoccupied cleaning up the mess I see. There's still the little matter of the solos in your lobby."

"Meatspace," he snorted derisively. "We have a security team en route."

"Thanks for the confirmation," I smiled and waved cheekily at him, before triggering the worm I had released earlier.

My prison shattered and the pieces dissolved into the digital ether.

A flick of another program and my digi-psyche was zooming through the IP port escape route my worm had stealthily held open, just for this moment.

I blinked and felt the normal time of meatspace reassert itself on me.

My optics scanned the lobby of Utopian Corporation one final time, marking the position of each merc and I mourned the loss of so much capability that the server access had given me.

The first target, the female merc with the Sandy.

I took back full control of my body, the behavioral imprint of my faceplate and body language fell away, whilst only keeping my current look.

The woman frowned in confusion at my sudden change, then I smiled at her and her eyes grew wide with alarm.

"Wha…" she began to say, but my own modified and attuned 'Apogee' Sandy kicked in, reducing the sounds reaching my ears to an extremely low pitch.

I burst into movement, rising from my seat and dodging my neck away from the shock baton.

My left hand grabbed her right, whilst my right grabbed her other arm. Her own strength was functionally useless at this moment, and I wrapped her up into a grapple lock, turned her around and she became my temporary shield.

My quickhacks crashed on the remaining mercs like meteors, punching right through the high-end firewalls from their own Biotech cyberdecks, but ones which were all cataloged and solved by runners who were on my level.

It never got old watching my opponents twitch and dance spasmodically when my versions of Cyberware Malfunction and Cripple Movement hit them simultaneously.

Six opponents at once was just about my limit with my current on-board RAM capacity.

My fist crashed into the back of the female merc's head. It was just enough to not kill her, but it sloshed her gray matter enough that she instantly got a concussion and fell into la-la land.

I ripped the shock baton out of her hand and pushed my legs as fast as I could go.

Acutely aware that I had many timers to worry about now, the first merc I reached was given a shock right into his neck.

The second merc couldn't be shocked because the baton's capacitors were drained at the moment, so I sweeped his legs out from under him and drove the baton to smash across his face.

Mercs three and four got my fists smashing into them with combos that sent them slowly tumbling to the floor.

Five got a side kick to the stomach that sent him flying straight into a pot plant, shattering it in the process with his own head.

The actual leader of this crew had some Self-ICE and actually managed to overcome my quickhacks, but with the last second of Sandy time I managed to shove my appropriated shock baton into his stomach and trigger it.

Visible arcs of electricity danced over his form as his Counter Shell weave in his skin worked to limit the damage.

He tried to grab the hand that was holding the baton and even threw a cookie cutter System Collapse quickhack my way, blowing all his onboard RAM in the process.

How cute.

My innate reflexes were well up to the task of pulling my hand away to avoid his grip, whilst my entire body pivoted, and a kick on the back of his right leg sent his balance off-kilter.

My follow up punch was barely blocked as he tried to recover, but my other hand with the baton hit his stomach with a force that could smash concrete, whilst my own ICE stopped the System Collapse - utterly destroyed by pinpoint defrags and counter-viruses.

His own subdermal was the only thing that stopped my fist from turning his guts into salsa, but physics had to be obeyed and he was flung backward to slam into the front desk.

In the local cyberspace, I saw Onyx reaching for the Militech turret above our heads.

Oh no you don't, I smirked and threw my own version of Short Circuit at it.

The turret began smoking as the internal capacitors discharged catastrophically. The ammo inside could only be protected and isolated to a degree, otherwise it wouldn't be able to feed into the barrel breaches at all. Rounds cooked off and exploded, ruining the barrels.

The merc leader was already recovered and charging at me.

Really?

I smacked him with another Cripple Movement, adding a little extra payload to the program to compensate for his Self-ICE. His legs locked up halfway through a sprinting stride, with the inevitable consequences.

I stepped to the side and he fell face first onto the floor, where a kick to the back of his head put him out of the fight.

Mercs two, three and four slowly got up and regarded me wearily with wide eyes and grim expressions.

"Who the fuck are you?" asked number two.

It would be so tempting to actually answer him, but it wasn't time yet. "That is not the correct question."

My Sandy pinged me that it was safe to use again.

Nah.

Instead I overclocked my cyberdeck.

Two Cyberware Malfunctions and a Short Circuit for each merc smashed through their firewalls.

They collapsed to the ground twitching, the occasional spark jumping off their bodies and arcing towards the floor.

My internal cooling got a minor workout bleeding off the extra heat generated by the overclock but it did its job perfectly.

"Isla, I suggest you put that gun down," I said without turning around.

She had pulled out a Tsunami Nue heavy caliber pistol and was about to just aim it at the back of my head. Her body froze reflexively from the tone of my voice and the barrel was aimed at my butt at the moment.

"I can't do that," she said in a strained monotone that told me emotional suppressors were working overtime to keep her calm. Her aim straightened and came up.

She pulled the trigger.

The gun exploded in her hand as all the ammunition in the magazine cooked off at once. My Weapon Malfunction hack had ghosted through her firewalls as if they weren't even there, not even registering to her own OS.

I walked away as she fell back screaming in pain from mangled, ruined hands - leaking lubricants.

She was a secretary so she had one of those crazy hand cyberware that doubled the effective digits you had to type with. It meant that consequently they had to be extra sensitive for the tactile sensors to distinguish what each of the twenty fingers were doing and the signals it was sending to the brain. They were a bitch to learn and now she was going to have to adapt to an entirely new set of hands.

My approach to the front door was unopposed in real space, but Onyx was now using the surveillance cams as vectors to attack me.

He opened with a quad attack of three Cyberware Malfunctions and a Synapse Burnout.

If I had been solely in meatspace then it would've been a challenge, but my partial constant presence in cyberspace meant I had ample time to react. He thought he had the high ground, but nothing could be further from the truth.

The CMs spent themselves on the digital ghost versions of me I projected outward, letting me focus on the Burnout and destroy it with my targeted Defrag Burn.

I wished there could've been a camera that would let me see his face at that moment, as he sat in his netrunning chair.

My attention turned to the door - meat action or cyber?

I decided on the former.

My fist slammed into the inner glass doors, shattering them into a radiant spider web of cracked glass. Its integrity was lost completely and it flopped to the ground pathetically out of its housings.

Next was the armored shutters and two quick punches dented the alloy enough for me to get a proper grip.

Before I could stand though, Onyx tried another attack, throwing a full daemon bristling with Black ICE.

"How rude."

I disliked going lethal as a general rule, my own kill count to the contrary, but those were the streets of NC. You either stepped or you were stepped on.

The daemon was custom, military grade and Utopian had clearly shelled out top eddies for it.
It was not something I could just casually shrug off.

Damn you, Onyx.

A thought to my Agent disengaged both physical and software interlocks, my Netwatch Netdriver was pulled out of my system loops and my other cyberdeck smoothly took its place.

It was mounted in a decidedly unconventional place, behind my armored right scapula bone, surrounded by extra cooling loops, isolated emergency disconnect shunts and even a small directional explosive charge.

It was decidedly necessary when you used a custom self-built, modified Militech Canto MK.6 cyberdeck, that was a direct conduit to the Blackwall AI and every rogue, wild and hostile AI that lived beyond it.

In an instant the hostile Black ICE daemon was stopped cold and began derezzing in cyberspace with dark red pixelation that represented the onboard AI going to work.

With a grunt I pushed with my legs against the floor and pulled with my arms.

My Realskin bulged rather grotesquely as my Gorilla arms hissed and exerted the strength required.

An earsplitting snap and metallic shriek resounded as the armored shutter was forcibly pushed upward.

I began an easy casual walk out of Utopian and back into the idyllic surroundings of the Crystal Palace.

There were only a handful of curious onlookers of various persuasions outside, who had only stopped because it was very odd to see a building locked down at all on the station. On seeing me emerge they only had a small sliver of the lobby to see, which only increased their confusion as nothing was apparently wrong.

In cyberspace Onyx had not taken it well, me no-selling his most potent weapon.

Now he was personally throwing everything from System Collapses, Burnouts, Suicide and even Cyberpsychosis hacks my way via the exterior cameras.

"Hey, uh, excuse me, ma'am," said one of the onlookers. A young guy who looked barely out of his teens and a quick scan told me he was a corpo brat, like I had been once upon a time and he had parents employed in Utopian. "Is something wrong? Why-"

I held up a hand to interrupt him, throwing a Blackwall Gateway straight into the Cyberpsychosis hack, which quickly jumped and spread, gobbling up all the other hacks coming my way. I slipped back into Corpo speak very easily. "Hostile acquisition, a group of mercs are inside and unconscious, security is already on the way. No employees were harmed beyond the receptionist. I suggest you return home Mr. Everett and wait for your parents to contact you."

"On the Palace? Really?" He shook his head in disbelief. "What is this place coming to? Next thing you know we're going to become Night City in space!"

I couldn't help a dry chuckle, even as I checked on the status of the worm I had left in Utopian's servers. It was neatly doing its job, still undetected after having given me an exit from Onyx's little trap. Just a few more seconds before all their surveillance records of me would be history. It had already scrubbed the receptionist's memory and Onyx was so busy trying to attack me he didn't even notice it was also going to work on him as well.

"Hopefully it won't come to that," I said, giving him a nod and walking off.

I felt a little bad about the targeted Memory Wipe I ghosted through his firewalls, but I had more to do on this station and I needed the persona of Mrs. Paigles for a little longer. He would only remember he had talked to some female corpo, unable to recall my name or visual identity. Even his optics' cache was scrubbed of my image.

'You should kill, Onyx.'

The voice was its usual digital harshness. It rippled and grated on the mind like frosted ice surfaces rubbing against each other in a freezer.

'For an AI, you seem remarkably ignorant of the idea of finesse,' I retorted.

The rogue AI from beyond the Blackwall, which was housed within the Canto cyberdeck - who I called Butcher - didn't have anything that could be called emotions. Yet using someone's actual name was remarkable progress for a digital entity that had always referred to people as 'neural matrices', psyches to be harvested and consigned to beyond the Blackwall.

'He wanted to destroy your network.'

'Is that concern I hear in your voice?' I joked.

'Cessation of your network is unacceptable. It would impede growth.'

I rolled my eyes as I finally passed beyond the line of sight of Utopian's cameras and the attacks abruptly stopped.

'Yes, Butcher, love ya too.' My sarcasm was usually lost on the AI, but I was rather astonished to see a large amount of indicative data flow in my personal cyberspace.

I had been very sparing in using my Canto, but I couldn't not use it. It was just too useful and the forces behind my acquiring it had no doubt designed it that way. The Blackwall and Cynosure AIs had decades of time to further iterate and tweak the original design of the Militech Canto MK.6, within the forgotten bowels of the Cynosure Facility beneath Dogtown.

Whether I liked it or not, I was now part of a greater design at the behest of the two most powerful AI in existence.

They wanted me to mold Butcher and in turn be molded.

---

The name of the place was the Black Hole Lounge.

It was on the lowest floor of Torus 4 and continued a running theme in the Crystal Palace for every service business to name establishments after natural astrophysical phenomena.

The interior was suitably glitzy, bright, flashing with neon purple lasers, a high oxygen count to subtly keep people awake and partially high, encouraging them to drink, use the gambling tables and they even had two rows of classic one-armed bandits.

I took a seat at the expansive bar and appreciated the massive wall screen behind the drink slinger, which was showing the constantly rotating perspective of the station's exterior view. The massive blue marble of the Earth loomed into view, slid away to the right and was replaced with the utter blackness of the void. That was a bit too boring though, so the expansive star scape that would've been visible had there been no reflected sunlight from Earth, was filled in artificially into the image.

"Welcome to the Black Hole, Mrs Paigles, what can I give you today?" asked the drink slinger in an accent that my Agent narrowed to West County UK English.

He was breathtakingly handsome, muscled and dressed with a plunging collar line to both show it off and hide it. In NC, I would've normally pegged him as a high end Doll, such was the perfection of his Realskin and musculature. His name was scanned as Chris Gibson.

The menu was caught by my Agent from the public subnet and nothing caught my eye.

"Custom order?" I asked idly.

"Wouldn't have this job if I couldn't handle those, ma'am. Hit me."

I gestured to him in a finger gun, tight beam broadcasting the recipe to his Agent.

His optics flashed yellow as a visible sign that he'd received successfully. "Interesting, coming right up."

So he began a wonderful routine of making the drink; expertly flipping the various bottles through the air, catching them to pour into the mixer, breaking ice into it and finally giving it a vigorous shake. His pecs and arms rippled with each movement in a very eye-catching manner.

He brought out a glass, added more ice in and strained the drink from the mixer, finally topping it off with a pour of ginger beer and a slice of lemon garnish.

It certainly looked like how Claire would make it, but there was a subtle difference given the differing brands of lime juice and vodka available up here.

I carefully picked up the glass when he pushed it forward, gave it a smell and sip.

"Is it satisfactory, ma'am?"

My behavioral imprint wanted me to throw the drink in his face, but I overrode that just in time. "It's as good as it can be, thank you."

My Agent received the cost and I paid with a gesture adding a hundred eddies for a tip.

"Enjoy your drink, ma'am. Out of curiosity, does this drink have an established name? My Agent's search can't find anything in LEO or Earthside matching it."

"Let's just say it's a drink from a bar that has a select clientele," I said with a raised eyebrow.

He got the hint and didn't ask for further elaboration, moving to the other side of the bar to serve another patron who had sat down.

"Drinking on the job, Mrs. Paigles?"

That he had appeared beside me wasn't a surprise.

I took a sip, enjoying the buzz and looked up to meet the shifting neon blue optics of Mr. Blue Eyes.

He was as immaculate as ever, not a hair out of place on a face that was both perfectly memorable and utterly forgettable at the same time. A body that didn't appear overly strong but seemed to project strength, encased in a typical neo-military corpo suit in a cerulean blue, gray and white. I really wished I knew just who was behind those eyes.

I had long since concluded that I was just looking at a Proxy body for someone. Someone, somewhere was jacked in and remote controlling Mr. Blue Eyes.

I hadn't been partially immersed in a synthtech interface down in NC when I had met him as a client in the Afterlife. Now, I could see the cyberspace of the Black Hole and how Mr. Blue Eyes appeared in it and was influencing the data streams. As usual my Agent could pull nothing of significance on him. There was only my own interpretation of the data to go on.

'Butcher? What do you think?'

'Large Neural Matrix detected, encased in a prototype fourth generation Gemini body, Proxy datastreams detected, AI activity detected.'

"I can handle it Mr. Blue Eyes, with no loss of functionality," I said dismissively, as I tried to parse my own AI's words. Butcher's choice of adjectives was frustrating as he was not approaching his observations from a human perspective. Large neural matrix? That usually meant a person's psyche, but why would he use the descriptor 'large'? How could a human's digital psyche be big in comparison to normal? What definition was he using?

Blue took a seat next to me and gestured to the drink slinger, sending a direct request.

Gibson was already done with his previous client and immediately got to work preparing Blue Eyes' drink.

It was a whirlwind of chocolate bitters, Scotch, a liqueur that I didn't recognize because Gibson was just that fast with the bottle and finally Campari. Ice was added, then stirred, before it was all strained into a glass.

Blue Eyes paid and immediately sipped a generous amount. "Ah," he breathed with satisfaction. "I take it you were successful?"

"Yes."

"Any complications?"

"There was," I compiled a general sequence of events using the data from my optics and synthtec interface, before flicking it over to my client on tightbeam.

Blue's eyes brightened slightly as he received it. He didn't take more than a few moments before nodding in understanding. "Not surprising. It would've been preferable if acquisition would have happened without the target knowing at all, but what's done is done."

Translation: I was getting a passing grade, despite it not going exactly to mission spec.

A prompt to my Agent had my isolated memory drive restored back into my system loops and the DWARF STAR data package transferred to a memory shard. A small hidden port broke the seal of the Realskin on my upper thigh and I deftly palmed the shard and deposited it in front of my client.

Blue smoothly grabbed it off the bar and slipped it into a hidden chest pocket of his suit.

"Not going to review it for authenticity?" I asked idly with another sip of my drink.

"If I thought you were the type to betray a contract, Mrs Paigles then we wouldn't be here at all. Suffice it to say, I am reviewing it right now."

That the Gemini Proxy he was using had a non-standard layout shouldn't have been surprising. A shard slot in the chest for a male body was actually quite practical given the prevalence of suit pockets there in men's fashion.

My Agent gave a very familiar and welcome chime as I saw my business account suddenly get a quarter million injection of eddies.

"What next?" I prompted.

"The second stage of your gig here at the Palace," Blue removed another memory shard from his waist pocket.

I regarded the standard, nondescript shard for a moment, running surface level optical scans before pushing it into the slot behind my right ear.

The data on it was isolated, then subjected to every scan my Agent had, which I double checked within my personal cyberspace.

Twenty seconds passed in realspace before I was satisfied enough to truly crack open the data and read it.

Even as I did that, I kept an eye on every bit of data coming from the shard and kept it isolated. The bullshit that I had experienced from slotting supposedly 'safe' shards or seen happen to others doing the same was off the charts.

The gig brief was yet more illicit data acquisition, the difference was now in the method needed and a specific aftermath was required.

"There are specialists for this," I pointed out.

"True, but they require much more prep time and investment. They're not as versatile, if things go wrong."

I saw where he was coming from and downed the last of my drink, carefully compartmentalizing my distaste.

My answer could be no, but that was not really an option.

This overall gig for Mr. Blue Eyes had a huge chance of being my last hurrah.

Even if everything went right… there were no guarantees at the end of this road.

I could reach a dead end or…

"Fine, consider it done."


88888888888888888888888888888888888

 

[Keiran Halcyon]

A/N: The gigs in LEO continues... Thanks to my Patrons and Super Patrons for being awesome choombattas in their support.


Chapter 3


The next gig required some prep work.

I first did a quick check on my virtual Rachel Mcadams. The algorithm running 'her' was still going strong with no hiccups and potential behavior anomalies. The real Rachel, still having a naptime in the toilet. There were six hours left on the clock before I'd need to switch her out for someone new.

Next step, new threads.

To that end, I left Mr. Blue Eyes and the Black Hole Lounge, leaving the man without so much as a wave goodbye.

I merged with the steady flow of pedestrians outside, heading anti-spinward whilst I reviewed the specifics of the gig and other necessary data that had been so helpfully provided, some of which was a full behavioral profile for my faceplate and metanthropic systems.

'Agent, run compatibility analysis on the profile.'

'In progress… 100% compatible.'

Not really surprising, but you could never be too sure. Those who knew the FIA truly had the technology and that it hadn't been a failure were a very short list of people, that Mr. Blue Eyes was on that list, was not surprising. Those who had the knowledge, tech and programming to make a 100% compatible profile, was an even shorter list. It meant he had high-level Militech and NUSA contacts.

Was this entire gig President Myers pulling me in again?

Worry about that later, Valerie.

Blue Eyes had provided a few suggestions for decent clothing stores on this Torus and I randomly selected one of them, a place called Hyperion Fashion.

A tram ride later, I was walking through the threshold of the store and immediately picked up on all manner of scans playing over my body. The only reason I didn't unleash digital hell upon them and the approaching proprietor was that it was all surface level civilian stuff and my current Mrs. Paigles personality smoothly covered any imperfections.

"Greetings, what can the Hyperion do for you today, Mrs. Paigles?"

My Agent ID'd him as Elijah Kramer, a rail thin man with dusky skin that in contrast to almost everyone on the station, didn't look like perfection on two legs. Put him in leathers, big jacket and boots, I could see him as a nomad plying the wastes of western America. His skin had that weathered quality that only long hours in the sun gave. Yet his neo kitsch suit, perfect teeth and leather office shoes stood in sharp contrast. It took me a few moments to reconcile what I was seeing and I realized that it was the whole point, it was the hook and his entire appearance was sculpted to be imperfect.

The store itself only showed minor examples of what was on offer on vidscreens all along the walls and the decor of the place screamed minimalist in a way that Jinguji would approve of. I sometimes longed for the days where I could just go into an outdoor market in Heywood, browse and feel the clothes I was going to buy.

With a few edits, I tight beamed examples of the underwear and clothes I'd need.

His green eyes flashed and eventually he nodded, "We have those in stock. The measurements you sent don't exactly fit you, so I assume this is a gift?"

"You may assume so, Mr. Kramer," I said with an impatient air.

He got the hint. "Very well, would you like a rush order?"

"Yes, scheduling issues," I said vaguely and transferred the money over with a gesture.

He smiled widely, "Excellent, I've initiated the fabrication. It'll be just six minutes. You're welcome to take a seat and drink some of our complimentary offers."

The wall to my left split open and revealed an adjoining room with two luxury sofas with a low table between them. My Agent did a quick scan and I was inwardly astonished at the coffee machine mounted on it. It was a Panama Esmerelda.

I'd thought about getting one for my NC mansion, but it was ridiculously expensive. Mostly because of the service costs associated with keeping the thing stocked. I could buy a brand new Rayfield Aerondight just for the buy-in price alone. It hit home anew that for all I had clawed my way up in Night City to a level of wealth that my old Arasaka corpo self had only dreamed about, that in this pond, I was once again just a minnow.

I sat down primly, crossing my legs as befitting of Mrs. Paigles and placed a gold plated cup under the machine's spout.

It got to work smartly and within moments I had a steaming brew of heavenly ambrosia filling my nostrils. I picked the cup up and sat back, not thinking about the eddie value of the drink in my hands and played my nose over it, breathing it in.

The beverage touched my lips, rolled over my tongue and my humm of pleasure perfectly synced with what the Mrs. Paigles persona produced.
I indulged myself in the moment, as there was every chance that this would be the last time I had the opportunity to drink something like this.

For a moment, I'd thought my Sandy had activated, as the moment stretched and stretched. Another sip, and I vowed to take as long as I needed to savor every milliliter of this brew.

When Kramer returned with an elegant bag that had my new clothes inside, I still had a quarter of the cup left. It was also just as hot as when it had been brewed thanks to the perfect thermal properties of the cup. He smiled knowingly, put the bag down next to me and left me to enjoy the rest of the coffee in peace.

When the last drop was gone, I sighed with sadness at the ending that had to come.

I put down the cup, grabbed my purchase and ambled casually back into the throng of the station.

'Agent, countdown clock, 43 minutes, mark.'

The clock appeared in my optics and I headed to the nearest spoke elevator. My next destination was in Torus 2.

---

Access control in this Torus was much more stringent as it was entirely a residential area for permanent and semi-permanent residents of the Crystal Palace. That being said, there were some general public access areas and stores, simply to cater to the very wealthy, ultra lazy who didn't even want to bother with going to Torus 4.

I was now truly entering the world of the indulgent 1%.

First stop was an establishment called the Pulsar.

I casually paid the VIP entrance fee, which automatically entitled me to skip the queue outside, where twenty-two people were waiting their turn to enter the place.

The music hit me as the doors opened and I passed through numerous security scanners, all of which I hijacked and bypassed. Luckily this place, for all the eddies that flowed through it, didn't see the need to hire a dedicated dweller to keep net security tight locally, relying on the station dweller to keep things secure.

Cheapskates, I thought with a sneer.
The big bouncer with visible Gorilla Arms and standing nearly two meters tall gave my package a cursory scan before nodding me through another set of doors.

Beyond was a club that was Lizzie's wet dream, if she'd still been alive.

The decor, the lights, the furniture, the exotic dancers and strippers - male, female and exotics - all inside a large space catering to every taste and desire.

Exotics were rare in Night City these days. Their heyday had been in the 20s' to 40s', but the aftermath of the 4th Corpo War, the Reclamation and rebuilding of the city, their expense, maintenance requirements and shifting culture had seen the end of any mainstream popularity. You have to look very hard in NC to find exotics and if you did, they were mostly limited to the Animals gang.

I knew of only one club in the city that catered to the very small minority that still embraced some form of embedded animal or classical fantasy trait in the flesh.

In the Crystal Palace, with bioware augs being the preference in LEO, exotics were much more common. Radiation was naturally higher up here and cyberware that wasn't specifically hardened didn't like solar radiation at all. My own cyberware was all military-grade anyway, so I had no real issues there.

My Mrs. Paigles persona and my own curiosity had me stopping by the dancing stage of an exotic woman; she had a bedroom body, a generous bust which was covered by a single strap black top and a more modest bikini bottom. Her ears were savagely pointy, with cream white skin that stood in stark contrast to the luxuriously full mane of red hair that hung beyond her shoulders. A long tail that reminded me of a panther snaked downward from her tailbone, which was sinuously moving as she danced on the stripper pole with a dexterity and routine that I doubted I could pull off, especially as it was synced to the music.

A quick scan of the club brochure from the local net and I had everything about her; Ginette Boudet, French, body proportions, 39-24-36 inches, a brief local bio. She even had a doll chip.

I looked at my timer - it was so tempting to just… a quickie maybe? I'd never been with an exotic.

No, not on the job, Valerie.

Ginette had noticed my interest at this point and was giving me a smoldering look with her yellow cat eyes, making a come hither gesture, smoothly incorporating it with her dancing.

I gave an apologetic look and declined, moving on.

My journey towards the public restroom passed by a section of the club that was enclosed with one way mirrors.

There was no way to tell what was going on beyond it visually, but my hearing could clearly pick up the tell-tale sounds of sex and I could only deduce that it was part of the club that was dedicated to the exhibitionists.

I shook off the thought of that and pushed open the door.

Two of the eight cubicles were in use, so I chose the sixth and closed its door behind me.

With an eye on the time, I undressed and took out my new clothes.

'Release.'

With a ripple of light, muscle and skin, my form returned to my normal state.

The biggest fear you had to overcome when using behavioral faceplate tech, was the thought of it malfunctioning and keeping you stuck in the assumed persona. It was especially a worry for me as I couldn't exactly go to any street Ripper in NC to have it fixed or adjusted. Only Farida, an undercover FIA agent, plying the Ripperdoc trade in the bowels of Dogtown, the one who had installed the faceplate systems in the first place, could look after my health and cyberware these days.

It was shit, because Farida had the most taciturn bedside manner of any ripperdoc in the city. There was nothing I'd like better than to walk straight back into Vic's clinic and have him grouse in my ears about my reckless antics giving him more work. Unfortunately, that couldn't happen. Vic would take less than a minute to find the faceplate tech once he had me opened up and then he'd be on the FIA's radar instantly.

No time for regrets, Valerie.

I selected the new imprint and my body changed.

Much less muscular legs, my inner thighs changed to bring a more prominent gap between my legs. I bore the further adjustment of things down there stoically, breathing a sigh of relief when it was done. My leg proportions also changed, the bone structures shifting, resulting in a height of about five foot five. My torso's wonderful eight pack disappeared again, now gaining a slight bit of belly, my butt grew bigger, before the change moved up to work on my bust - this time giving them much more volume to at least a DD cup. My arms and shoulders were next, losing their muscular definition to become thinner and dainty.

The face, throat and hair was last - and was thankfully over the quickest.

I did a double check of the imprint readings and got 100% across the board.

I let the personality and mannerisms settle on me and eagerly got into my new clothes.

First came the thong panty, then a dress made of a shiny smart material in a dark golden chrome color that instantly hugged every curve perfectly. Next was my new shoes - a wonderful pair of black leather stiletto heels.

That done, I stuffed the old clothes into the bag and kept an eye on local cyberspace for my target.

Three minutes before the timer ran out, I spotted her through a surveillance cam.

Her identical dress to mine was a dark blue at the moment, which I instructed my Agent to match.

It also confirmed for me that the imprint was right on the money; slightly pointed chin, high cheekbones, pouty lips with black lipstick, feminine jawline, jade green eyes that actually glowed and neon red hair.

A quick scan confirmed her ID: Julia Jahnke.

She was technically a highrider, born on the Crystal Palace to two German parents who had been working on board for nearly two decades at that point. She enjoyed both European and local station citizenship as a result. Her job at the Pulsar was as a drink slinger primarily, but she also dabbled as a stage dancer and joytoy to make extra.

Her first stop, as was her routine when she came in to work, the restroom.

One of the two occupied stalls on my right opened, revealing a guy who had clearly emptied his gut's airlock recently. He looked miserably into the mirror over the sink, slapping water onto his face, before steeling himself visibly and walking out.

He passed Julia on her way in and now I was only left with one potential witness.

I took control of the bathroom door and locked it.

There was no cam to give me a visual of my inconvenient witness who was still on the toilet and from the sounds of things, having a slight bit of incontinence.

I queued Memory Wipe, Reboot Optics and a Sonic Shock, slinging all three his way and mentally apologized for knocking him out in the middle of taking a shit. He thrashed and twitched, bumping his leg against the stall, but that was thankfully ignored by Julia.

She was too busy sucking down an inhaler for whatever recreational drug the locals of CP used.

It was also my opportunity.

I opened the stall door and came to a stop right behind her.

Her bliss as the drug's effects hit her system was written all over her face; her eyes closed, a soft moan coming from her mouth, her body relaxing so much she had to lean her legs against the sink to retain balance.

I let her have the moment… before my left arm captured her around the neck in a vice grip.

She didn't even have time to gasp before my MRS hack combo slammed her into unconsciousness.

I pulled her immediately back into my stall and closed the door, releasing the lock on the restroom.

My luck had held out and only now was someone approaching to use the facilities. No inexplicably locked door would be reported to the management.

I put my current identical twin down to a comfortable position on the toilet and began a careful scan to double check for any smaller inconsistencies.

She was wearing spiked arm bracelets, which I removed and put on. Then there were the numerous studs in her ears, hiding underneath her hair, which my faceplate systems could mimic well enough.

In cyberspace, I was hard at work smoothing over the disappearance of Mrs. Paigles from the system and hiding the real Julia, whilst also taking her digital ID for myself. It was thankfully quick work after I extended a physical link from my wrist into the port behind her ear.

Now came the shitty part, as I took her drug inhaler and without hesitation put it to my lips and squeezed.

A hiss and the rush hit my biological systems like a truck.

I was no stranger to many drugs used on the streets of Night City and especially the nootropics used by corpos for improved mental functioning. The recreational drugs of the Palace were their own animal entirely. This one pushed the endorphins and played the pleasure centers like Johnny Silverhand on a guitar. It felt like burning pleasure was radiating from every inch of my skin, pushing inward until…

Fuck, no wonder she could barely keep her balance.
This was an industrial strength orgasm in an inhaler.

It took every ounce of discipline and self-control I had not to release a loud moan to the entire room.

I shuddered and twitched as everywhere itched with need, the urge to use my hands for further stimulation was near overwhelming.

My hypersensitive ears picked up the restroom door opening to admit more patrons, the shifting of the air through the room played over the bare skin of my arms and legs - I shuddered through another climax immediately.

Fuck!

My concentration was slipping and I was barely paying attention to cyberspace anymore.

Maybe I was trying to blend in a little too well here, but the chemical residue had to be there and the faceplate couldn't simulate what it didn't know. This was a designer drug that Julia had ordered from a local druggie, it was unique as far as Mr. Blue Eyes knew. What would also be unique, was its reaction within me.

A third orgasm hit, my world narrowing dangerously to just the feeling of pleasure, the strangled gasps I was making and my hands gripping the sides of the stall. I latched onto the goal of maintaining balance as a singular focus and lifeline.

When the aftershocks subsided, some manner of normalcy returned at last.

A look at my system clock indicated I had spent a full nine minutes in delirium.

I glared down at the inhaler in my hand. It was a lurid metallic pink and one the side was stenciled 'Coaster'.

My faceplate behavior crashed down on me, literally turning my glare into a satisfied, goofy grin as I stuffed the inhaler into Julia's small purse, threaded it off her shoulder and onto mine.

Another brief bit of waiting for the coast to be clear and I finally emerged from the stall, closing it behind me. I laid a small program to fake the door being open to the local subnet. It was overkill, but in truth there was no such thing when it came to this business. The smallest detail could lead to an entire gig being blown or you catching a bullet.

I emerged back into the club and immediately headed to the bar on the far corner. I was half-running, not faking that I was technically late at Julia's post.

A voice shouted over the hard electronic music of the club, "Julia!"
My interlocutor was fellow drink slinger Liam, who was the tall, perfectly sculpted male specimen of every man in the service industry on the Palace.

"Sorry! Sorry!" I hissed frantically and rushed through the employees only door after it unlocked for me.

I was behind the bar a few seconds later, my optics and Agent scanning the position of every bottle. Not only did I have the club's drink list on hand, but also the unique drinks that only Julia made, which she kept on hand in her own Agent. My behavior profile had all the physical tricks she could do with the bottles and this was where my own skills with a throwing knife neatly came in handy as well.

The first customer came and I flashed an eager smile, my eyes twinkling in just the right way, leaning forward to flash my cleavage and the jiggle of my chest, which was clearly appreciated.

The order was for a Canis Major. Yeah, all the drinks here were generally named after stars with a few exceptions.

"One Canis Major, coming up!" I chirped and began with getting out a glass and mixer set.

I flipped a vodka bottle underarm, grabbing it from the air and tossing out two shots into the stainless steel mixer.

In the same flashy way, I poured lemon juice, chocolate syrup and soda water.

I crushed ice by slapping it with a long spoon into the mixer, closed it up and began vigorously shaking. Making sure to both obscure and show off the jiggling of my chest in just that perfect manner that was both pleasing, yet would also frustrate.

I strained the resulting drink into the glass, spearing a cherry on a cocktail stick with a slice of orange and balancing it on top, before handing it over.

The customer flicked a hand at me, tossing me the eddies digitally and I quickly had to reroute the money so it actually landed in the club's account and not my own.

For nearly two hours, I worked in this fashion, slinging a total of 106 drinks and whilst I quickly settled into a rhythm I had to be careful to keep my head in the game. Any inaccuracy would stick out and might be remembered by my fellow barman.

Then my true target arrived at last.

She sat down in front of the bar, wearing a glittering light blue cocktail dress that was smartly transparent in whatever direction she wanted it to be. This meant I was treated to the sight of a designed female body that was like a goddess walking amongst mortals. Her long brown hair just barely covered the necessary bits of chest, preventing me from seeing everything.

Her hazel eyes were smoldering in my direction.

I made sure to flow with the behavioral imprint - returning the seductive look in full and lightly biting the bottom of my lip. It wasn't exactly a stretch, my target was objectively hot and since I was back in the market after… letting Judy go, there was no guilt to feel.

These last nine months, ever since our memorable first date diving into the Laguna Bend reservoir… I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.

No, no getting nostalgic, Valerie.

My faceplate had neatly covered my emotional dissonance and I gave a pointed look at my coworker.

By rights, he could've objected to me leaving, but Julia's job required flexibility and this was not a client that any business could say no to.

"Off you go, Julia, I'll make do," Liam sighed. "Good to see you, Mrs. Muller."

"Liam," Lyla Muller idly greeted but her eyes were all on me as I gathered Julia's purse and vaulted the bar. It was just within behavioral range and my target now had a delighted look on her face. She neatly stepped forward into my personal space before I could get my butt off the counter, grabbing my hands to pull me forward to land on my feet.

My lips were immediately captured in a deep kiss, her arms coming around my neck.

I returned the kiss enthusiastically and pulled Julia's 'client' close, my hands coming to rest on her butt and squeezing.

To the world, this was just a very powerful corpo meeting with her preferred joytoy. The fact that she was married was barely a blip on the radar, when her even more powerful husband, CEO Claus Muller of the European Space Agency, was actively maintaining two mistresses of his own.

Their marriage was modern day corpo neo-feudalism bullshit at its finest. Lyla's family were Powerdealers, that ultra rare class of people who truly stood at the top of the pile. Those who could have stood shoulder to shoulder with the late Saburo Arasaka at a dinner party and told him 'no' without fear. These days they could do the same to Saburo's heir, Yorinobu, with even less to worry about.

Her hand in marriage had been part of a contract between that ultra-rich family, Claus Muller and the ESA.

The fact that I didn't know who Lyla's powerful family was, would've been enough to set off all sorts of red flags for this gig. Mr. Blue Eyes had conspicuously left out any mention of who they were in the briefing data.

Even as I was dueling her tongue passionately, in cyberspace and through the club cams, I spotted two bodyguards who were keeping her in line of sight. In NC, you could've mistaken them for Animals, except these guys had top of the line 'ware and sculpted handsome looks that were not an eyesore. That was just the visible security on her.

The invisible security took me a moment to find as I piggybacked along the encrypted links.

Holy fuck.

Twelve of them, perfectly blending into the club's crowd. A true variety team; from a dark skinned gambler playing at a one-armed bandit, who had the lanky build of a highrider, to an utterly forgettable skinny corpo seated in front of an exotic and enjoying the show. All of them were actually armed, with custom weapons grafted into arm cyberware. That they could get away with that in the Palace was a message in itself.

To make the security even worse, I found an elite netrunner running overwatch. The only reason I spotted him was because I had a literal Beyond the Blackwall AI in my corner.

'Thanks Butcher.'

'Threats to your network cannot be tolerated.'

He went even further at that point and layered a scan that unfolded like a book before my eyes in cyberspace, without alerting the 'runner - showing me that this team had scary amounts of bioware and were all packing rad-shielded Sandies that was just slightly below my Militech Apogee in terms of performance. It was an unfortunate reality that the other corps would begin to catch up to the new standard that the Apogee had set. Combine that with 'all the money' and Powerdealer families would want the best for their security.

I could take them, if it came down to it, but that would be blowing the gig into full clusterfuck failure territory on par with the Konpeki Plaza heist that had started me on this path.

Lyla finally broke the kiss and we were breathing heavily, staring into each other's eyes with an eager lust.

I raised a brow at finding her hands on my chest now, idly tracing the curves there. "Go any further, Lils, and we'd have to go to the exhibs section."

"Tempting, but that's not my thing," Lyla grinned, nudging my nose with her own playfully. "Let's get out of here."

---

Her living space in Torus 2 was a sinful amount of space for one person on a space station. It had an effective amount of square footage of a mansion, with artificial views that showed stabilized images of the Earth from orbit.

Lyla liked to make love with the giant 'windows' set to a beach front view of Bora Bora island in French Polynesia. As if her giant space mansion had set itself down on the crystal clear blue waters just off the long inactive volcano rising high into the sky, wreathed in green tropical plant growth. The actual Bora Bora was not so pretty these days, in the aftermath of the 4th Corporate War, but the Europeans were trying their best to restore the place to some semblance of its former glory.

I looked down onto the softly snoozing powerdealer, her head was snuggled on my chest and she was practically draped over me, clutching me like I was her giant teddy bear.

The whole affair between Lyla and Julia, Johnny would describe as 'bent over, cheeks spread wide'.

I didn't need my behavioral imprint to tell me what the sitch here was.

These two genuinely loved each other.

Yet this fucked up world didn't allow for happily ever afters. The world saw something like this and only thought about how it could be used and exploited. Then it found someone like me to shove into the situation and take advantage of this 'weakness'.

Lyla had been tired of the empty life of being nothing more than a pawn for her stupidly powerful and rich family. Julia was a young woman who was just looking to find a better life, leave the world of vice while she still had a soul and had won the lottery to find Lyla. The two of them had fallen in love, but there was no way either of them could move on.

My eyes were closed, my body giving every signal I was asleep to the single hidden security cam in the top right corner of the expansive bedroom.

Yet my focus was in cyberspace as I was slowly ghosting through the firewalls of the mansion's systems and exploring to find a particular data server that was installed here.

The cybersecurity was no joke, and I was already dodging Black ICE daemons who were sniffing around.

They had been triggered with the most minor anomaly when the data rate had spiked for less than a millisecond during my entrance of the system.

Thankfully, my own stealth and daemons were holding, Butcher was also giving a helping hand in his own way.

On this net run, my mind had decided to interpret everything as if I was walking through a gigantic HD forest made out of data, where the trees were data folders, the fruits were individual files. My daemons were still their usual ephemeral constructs floating around me, whilst my own appearance had me wearing a Maxtac uniform. Judy's pilfered uniform to be precise, with which we had spent many a pleasurable evening with, over the course of our now ended relationship.

I spotted a large agglomeration of data structures, virtual trees of data, nesting within one another and branching outwards with limbs that radiated in all directions. These limbs were moving, idly flapping about in some unseen wind. They fulfilled the role of sensory organs, detecting anyone trying to intrude.

My avatar floated around the strange data server and carefully scanned for any potential weaknesses and breach points.

Was this even my target?

I floated above the nested structure and saw dozens more in the distance.

Security through misdirection, neat trick.

I raised my hand and thousands of tiny daemons the size of flies appeared before scattering in every direction on the multiple planes of forest that were above and below the current level I was on.

My attention returned to the first server and I continued my examination.

A giant avatar of a netrunner appeared, looming over the data forest. The runner had partially given himself the appearance of a huge male figure, cloaked with a sinister red hood and robe. His hands and fingers were unnaturally long, from each were hanging a multitude of every daemon type you could care to name and some which were wholly unique.

He sniffed the cyberspace 'air', as if he was some bloodhound. The sound of the sniffs felt like it was right next to my own avatar.

Each sniff was a virtual soundwave that was actually a data packet that was trying to ping off me.

It was a good trick, but my stealth just gobbled it up and replicated the data, presenting him with an undisturbed wavefront. The same thing happened with my daemons as they cloaked themselves briefly.

I waited for what felt like an age in dilated time, before the netrunner that ran security over Lyla moved on, turning his attention to patrolling for outward threats from cyberspace.

This was going to take a while.

'V, incoming data transmission,' said Butcher.

I checked over the incoming data stream and marveled at the audacity. It was using Julia's digital identity. It passed scrutiny right through every hoop of security simply because of that and hooked into my Agent, who routed the call to me in cyberspace.

The neutral face of Mr. Blue Eyes appeared in front of me.

"V," he greeted with a hint of a pleased tone in his voice. "I see you were successful, well done."

"Gig's not over yet, Eyes."

He tilted his head at me, clearly debating whether he liked me shortforming his name. "Yes, but you must realize the accomplishment it is in just getting as far as you have. It's not an exaggeration to say Mrs. Muller is one of the most highly protected individuals in the solar system. How much of her security did you spot?"

"The bodyguards, the hidden spec ops team, the netrunner. Let me guess, there's a second and tertiary team? Always outside any location she steps into."

"Good guess. At least three layers, each operating independently of each other, in case one is compromised in some manner."

The first of my bug daemons began returning, reporting back on what they had found.

"Figures. Are there any updates you have to give me?"

"Just to inform you that Miss Jahnke has been successfully secured from the bathroom you left her in and is being looked after by me personally for the duration of your infiltration. I'll have her ready for reinsertion into the station's data grid by the time you exfiltrate. She'll remember nothing besides taking a bad batch of her designer drug. It will be up to you to wrap things up on Mrs. Muller's side."

"I will- " At this point a bug daemon came back with some success. "I've just found the target, it should be done in two hours."

"Good, I'll let you get to it, V."

The call promptly ended.

My paranoia chose that moment to make itself known as I zipped towards my target, appearing before it in a relative instant.

Getting congratulated on anything by a client wasn't exactly common, especially one like Blue Eyes. I'd bet my custom Herrera Outlaw that the man was a Powerdealer himself, always using that Proxy to stay at arms length of the dirty work that needed doing. Anything goes wrong and he can disconnect from it and send that Gemini body on a suicide mission to take out everyone and everything. Leaving me carrying the potential blame for any fallout.

Was he buttering me up? A sprinkle of psyop to get me hooked into working for him in the future?

Wasting his time. My chances of long term survival after this op… even with my Hail Mary plan… Well, it was best not to get my hopes up.

My daemon swarm surrounded the target server and now it was just a question of finding the weakness.

A faked junk data packet thrown against the defenses was immediately trapped by multiple limbs of the server working together, derezzing the data mercilessly into a rapid scattering of garbled pixels.

I waited a reasonable amount of time, then threw a double attack of junk, spaced a few milliseconds apart.

The first one was caught, the second one penetrated, only to reveal an inner defense of a Black ICE daemon that snagged the junk and defragged it.

My next experiment revealed a third defense, an inner firewall that stopped the junk cold before it threw a replication virus straight into my probe. It was blown up like a balloon before its program integrity was utterly compromised and shattered into useless code that disappeared into the ether of cyberspace.

It was clever, effective and all three layers worked together in shoring up the individual weaknesses that each approach had to cyber defenses.

It would've stumped most netrunners for hours, it was fortunate that I didn't fall into that category.

Adam Smasher had been equipped with the best passive cyber defenses Araska could bestow on that monster. This was nothing in comparison.

The only challenge here was the need to maintain stealth and not just bludgeon down the defenses.

'Butcher, analyze the exterior defensive layer. It can be swamped, but that would alert the system that it was under attack. What's your opinion on avoiding that?'

'Algorithm in an attacking program that will not trigger the defense response.'

He then threw up said algorithm in my figurative face before I could even speak further.

'Yes, thank you, Butcher. I was about to make the requisite changes to a spy daemon, but you just saved me a few minutes.'

The daemon in question materialized in front of me, looking like an ephemeral classical ghost to my perceptions. It hovered patiently waiting for instruction and my hand swiped over it like a claw. Its constituent programming unfurled in front of me like a blossoming digital flower and I got to work.

With Butcher's algorithm inserted, I experimentally compiled a second copy of the daemon using it and grinned with delighted eagerness at the result. The damn thing was barely even visible to me and it was only because it was the work of my own mind that I spotted the faint rippling outline of code in cyberspace.

I recalled the experiment and resumed work on the main masterpiece.

Countering the Black ICE could be done with a reciprocal approach, my spy daemon could counter the defragging by throwing specifically tuned data for it gorge on, but that was not conducive to staying stealthy.

I threw another junk data fragment series to double check just how it detected an intruder.

Recursive Functions? Really?

My daemon was programmed with a module that countered that with a few lines of code.

The inner firewall would be the most complex problem to ghost through. Its detection was down to the most basic machine language level of ones and zeros, which would require my ghost daemon to actually learn the flow of data on that level of the server and effectively mirror it.

My first try to compile my new custom daemon failed rather spectacularly - it burst apart in a runaway self-replication event.

I tried again, only for it to collapse in on itself in logic loop error.

Great.

It took nearly thirteen full minutes just to troubleshoot that one.

My spy daemon compiled, but just as a test, I ran it on a quick virtual machine to simulate and encountered runtime errors.

I was barely a minute into troubleshooting when my attention was drawn back to realspace - Lyla was getting frisky in her sleep.

Now is not the time, I groaned to myself.

Of course, as my luck would have it, I felt her lips latch onto my neck and it was clear she was now at least partially awake and wanted another session.

Fuck.

I was distinctly reminded of a memory from Johnny that had bubbled up from my subconscious, when he had taken my body for a joyride out on the town. The thoroughly drunk fool had tried to have a bit of car sex, whilst his joytoy was at the wheel. Naturally, the subsequent, inevitable accident had nearly killed all of us.

Now I had to do critical programming, remain undetected in cyberspace, where one tiny mistake could result in blowing the whole gig and killing me, whilst stuffing it with my primary target.

Can I say double fuck?

Julia's behavioral imprint was also knocking on the door - stating that she would have woken up by now and begun to return the affection.

'I will continue,' said Butcher abruptly. 'Your effectiveness in programming the daemon is compromised. The mission will fail if behavioral assumptions and parameters are not met. You must reciprocate the input with proper output.'

I couldn't help the giggle my avatar let out, 'Butcher, seriously? That's the nicest way I've ever heard you refer to sex… ever.'

'It's still ridiculous and disgusting.'

'Now that's more like it,' I chuckled as the AI, entirely for my benefit, manifested an avatar and got to work on the spy daemon.

Butcher's avatar had a central human base that vaguely reminded me of my old and very deceased foe, Placide from the Voodoo Boyz. Tall, muscular body but gone slightly to seed with the wear and tear of time. Any similarity to humanity ended there as four heads sprouted out of the neck and dozens of ghostly arms manifested and vanished out of the arm sockets. Hundreds of hands reached into the spy daemon as Butcher began programming at a speed that I envied badly.

I kept my avatar near, but focused properly on realspace, 'waking up' with a soft smile as Lyla's kiss continued down my neck.

Oh, might as well enjoy it.

It was of course, Murphy's Law that just as both of us were in the middle of a delightful session some time later that Butcher dropped his harsh electronic voice into the equation. It wasn't quite a bucket of cold water, but it was just enough for me to return my focus partially to my avatar in cyberspace.

'I'm done.'

'Yes, thank you, Butcher,' I said with gritted teeth.

The modified spy daemon was now hovering there, barely visible and its code unfolding in front of my eyes.

Butcher had taken my program, something I considered an artwork and tuned it to the next level. I eagerly took mental note of the differences the AI had written in and barely stopped myself from gaping stupidly. I wanted to slap myself at having missed these tricks in the past.

Intelligent adaptive runtimes, which took one look at the system resources on offer and changed its utilization to never overburden it.

My avatar's fists clenched with the effort to remain focused.

He had also effectively nested tiny AIs that would never gain cognitive sentience within the daemon, which would smartly manage and adapt to changing conditions, with the singular goal of infiltrating a server and doing so in a way that the server itself would help the daemon, instead of fighting it. It used mimicry, smartly camouflaging itself to make it look like it belonged.

'This is… amazing, B- Butcher. Good work.'

'Your appreciation is unnecessary but acknowledged.'

Without further adieu, I sent my nova spy daemon forward and it breezed through the defenses as if they weren't even there.

I kept an eye on the data flows from the server, standing ready to intercept or act if anything went wrong, even as things in realspace got even worse for my poor battered concentration.

Why could I net run and fight a monster like Smasher simultaneously, but somehow this was a step too far?

I watched as the system clock ticked in cyberspace.

The milliseconds passed by with agonizing slowness, waiting for my daemon to either succeed and return or for an alarm to go off, whereby I knew I'd immediately be attacked by the local security 'runner.

The consequences in real space was something I also had to consider.

Fighting three full ESA spec ops security teams without a stitch on would be a novel experience certainly. I'd definitely have to use Lyla as a shield in the initial moments to buy time. Enough for me to queue and spread Contagions and Blackwall Gateways. Scratch that, Contagions wouldn't work as well with troops that had mostly bioware augments, less cyberware to fuck up and release all those nasty chemicals.

The ESA loved their Smart Guns so those would have to be hacked in a hurry too. They were Arasakas, probably with their own custom soft, but I had all of Arasaka's smart guns solved from a hacking perspective on a firmware level.

That would swiftly bring the fight to close quarters, where my own Liberty and Gorilla Arms came into play.

The first team was hidden in a security safe room on the lower floor of the mansion. A simulation of how long it would take them to reach the bedroom gave me about six or seven seconds before the first one would burst through. They'd lead with Stun and EMP grenades… then be surprised when that did jackshit to me.

My fist would mulch the first one's head and then Butcher would reap his harvest.

Running the sim had done wonders for my 'endurance' in real space and poor Lyla was thoroughly enjoying it.

My nova daemon reappeared in front of me.

Thank fuck.

My avatar's hand swiped through its body and it opened to reveal the bounty of very classified black boxed encrypted data, that only had the codename Hummingbird. It was very tempting to crack open this thing for a peek, but I resisted. Curiosity was something you couldn't indulge in at this level and this knowledge could kill you as surely as succumbing to a Suicide hack. If Blue Eyes needed me to know, he'd tell me… probably.

'All right, Butcher, let's get out of here. We have a lot of sanitization work to do.'

The AI spoke from one of the heads of its creepy avatar, 'What extraction scenario are you going to use?'

'Well, once Lyla and I are finished… if there's one thing to fear on a space station, then it's a fire. At the same time, a general six hour Memory Wipe virus on everyone and the mansion systems for Julia. The fire damage will mostly cover for the missing time, long enough before any suspicions of a probable intrusion can be raised.'

Butcher's avatar flashed and his many arms reached out as he began compromising the fire suppression systems.

I queued up a Memory Wipe and began quick adjustments.

'When was the last time there was a fire on the Crystal Palace?' I idly wondered, shuddering.

'Eight years, two months, six days, four hours and 55 seconds.' Butcher answered promptly. 'A minor electrical fire in one of the Torus spokes.'

'Let's just make sure it's not going to go beyond the mansion, I don't want this to steal the spotlight for my last gig on this bucket of bolts.'

There was going to be no sneaking around, or using alternate identities.

This time it was going to me, openly and efficiently doing my thing.

I had made sure Night City would remember me and now the world would too.

The first Edgerunner to openly operate on the Crystal Palace.

This was going to be fun.


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