Shards, Cephalic Courier

[shards]

2:30am and I'm wired on cramshot. There's a quantum cryptochip fused to my spine that is in turn wetwired to an internal circuit complex containing a metric slagtonne of Yakashima paydata. And there's three guys following me.

Maybe I should have asked why they had me going to some next place in Copley Square- particularly when they could have walked there their damn selves. Maybe I should have asked what the data was, or who wanted it. But cyber knights don't ask questions. That's part of the job.

These guys think they're being subtle but they're about as subtle as a half-blind mutant grizzly in a cyberware shop. I keep my eye on them in the reflections of store windows. Who are they- Yakuza? Doubts. Valentinos? The guy in front looks like a hyperpunk wired on H. Whoever they are, this isn't their turf, and they're almost as nervous as I am.
"Excuse me lass, do ye have the time?" A perfectly kind and gentle young man asks me from a street corner. Fennians. Slag.
"Sorry!" I reply, brushing past him and jumping over an inconveniently-placed foot that I might have tripped over were I not so dexterous.
Two more guys appear from around the corner.
"No," the man behind me reports, "it's ye who's going to be sorreh, me darlin'."
More than instinct tells me that there's gonna be bullets coming. "Scorpion!" I yell. "Cover fire, now!"
"Frag this!" The man behind me shouts as I hear the ptoomph of a silenced sniper rife from across the street.
"Clive!" I shout to another man, ten paces behind Scorpion. "Intercept them!"
I turn my attention to the two men in front of me and pull my Saadr Assault D from the holster hidden underneath my trenchcoat. I can't suppress a grin as the look on their faces turns to blank terror. TAK TAK. TAK. Done.
"Knight!" I hear from behind me, drawing attention from my well-deserved self-satisfaction. "A little help would be nice!"
I turn just in time to see a Fennian bruiser, face red with pinpoint pupils, hurl an evil looking club crackling with electricity too close to Clive's face. It misses, but I can tell that he's not taking it well.
Ptoomph. A brick explodes into powder.
I never relish having to run into an open street in the middle of a gunfight but my runners are better to me alive than dead. Clive's too busy dodging to set up for a good swing and misses by a kilometre. I kneel on the dividing line and level my weapon. TAK. I decorate the side of the Stuart Street Mission with bits of skull and brains.

"Here. Take these." I drop more than the recommended dose of pax into Clive's shaking hand. He pops them dry.
"Next time, more bullets, less drugs." He grumbles.
"You knew the conditions of the job when you came to me, runner."
He grimaces but says nothing. Scorpion remains his usual stoic, silent self.
"We're here." I tell them, mostly to alleviate their distress. I bound up the steps into the office of the housing complex. The maître d' looks at me like I just crawled out of the river. "I need an uplink, fast." I command. "I have a hot file for you."

[shards]

"Bacto," I say, slipping into a booth in the back of the Killing Naga club. A raise of the eyebrows tells him I've uncovered some dirt on Yakashima. I'm still a little sore from the ambush a few days ago. It seems unlikely to me that it was a setup- but somebody wasn't guarding their information well enough, and it nearly got my runner killed. That deserved retribution.
"Knight," he addresses me. The connectors weren't kidding. You really do assume an all-new life when you become a Cyber Knight. People don't know my name, and they don't want to know my name.
"What's good here?" I ask, picking up a menu, not really paying attention.
"Cut the crap, Knight."
I slide the menu back across the table. He knows I've left a micropane full of Yaka paydata in between its sleeves.
His sustained glare means he's asking me how much. I lay five fingers down on the table. His mood lightens. Barely.
"It's expensive," he tells me, "the kind of stuff well-paid people can afford. I'm sure you'll be fine."
I order a half-dozen shots of synthetic alcohol and scan the room. Scorpion sits at the bar. Clive chatting up some corp waitress in white perforatex. Exits at 3 o'clock and 7 o'clock. Twelve tables, a couple dozen patrons. Any of them could be armed, dangerous, and possessing any kind of unfortunate objectives. That's fine though- I've had my evening pax and I feel ready for anything.
"By the way," Bacto says to me with those cold mechanical eyes. "Someone left you a message. Said to call them back. Didn't leave a V-chip though. Good luck with that. You gonna drink those?" Unceremoniously, he reaches across the table and picks up a shot glass of vudka, tilting the contents down his throat. The glass hits the table with an audible clack before he slides it in my direction. It skids and falls over. A V-chip lands in my lap. "Anyway, my time here is up. The work of a tech head is never done. Nice talkin' to you, Knight." He's gone as quickly as I came in.

---

I leave Scorpion and Clive at the mall across the street while I make a stop to the American History Museum. Its halls echo with the dead stillness of a tomb. Empty- just the way I like it. Their Matrix terminal looks like it hasn't been updated since the 22nd century. I make the call.
The vid window is black. A voice comes out the other end, warped and distorted. "Hello Knight."
"Hello, ominous black screen."
"I will be your Connector. An unspoken party needs a Cyber Knight willing to work against Yakashima to infiltrate a building inside of Yakashima territory."
Infiltrate a building? This is a step beyond the usual cap-and-walk assassinations these creeps were fond of handing out to me.
"And if I agree?" Never agree until you hear the price tag.
"I'm not here to prance around, Knight. Underneath the Matrix terminal you're at is a package. Pick it up."
I remove a white, lozenge-shaped container from under the terminal. Just as I'm trying to puzzle out how to open it, it slides open with a ker-psshh.
"Inside, you will find a lab coat, an ID card, retinal lenses, artificial fingerprints, a covert voice modulator and chip containing detailed floor plans and information about staff and guard changes."
"What is all this for?" I ask, bewildered.
"You, Knight, are going to break into CyberDyne Medical Tech. On the nineteenth floor, you will find an infranet terminal that is completely off the Global Matrix."
"And?"
"Your job is to plug it in. We'll handle the rest from there."
I go over the specifics in my mind. It's a suicide mission. I won't be able to take any heavy weaponry. I might not be able to take any weaponry. Same goes for armour. And I'm not thrilled about trusting a disembodied voice on a blacked-out circuit.
"If I refuse?"
"Refusal is not an option. But, my employers are not criminals." (Yeah, right.) "I have wired you an advance. I would suggest you spend it in preparation of your coming ordeal. You have exactly four days, seventeen hours and forty-three minutes. Connector out."
The line goes dead. I check my credder. It's sixteen thousand yen larger than it was twenty minutes ago.

I guess I better start preparing.

[shards]

"I don't like it."
"That's fine, Clive. I don't pay you to like it."
Scorpion solemnly cleaned his rifle.
We were camped out at Kate's in the shadow of the I-93 in the one place the corps couldn't touch: The anarchic and iconic Free Streets of the NBZ. Amidst the turbulence and oppression of gang violence and corp wars, one stretch of New Boston had managed to carve out a little segment of autonomy and free rule; but not without bullets, and not without blood.
"It stinks. It stinks worse than the river on a Wednesday."
"Ain't worse than any other day of the week." I squint with my good eye and study a hologram of the first floor of Cyberdyne. I can probably take the bandage off the other one today. My mind tries to recreate what I remember from my visit and match it to the schematic in front of me. Metal detectors, security cameras. Armed guards. The place was locked down so tight you could hear a nano drop.
"Shar-"
"Don't. Are you stupid? This place could be bugged."
"Okay, okay, boss. It's just a really big risk. It doesn't seem like you."
That grated on me. An arguably-convenient imposition from day one, my interest in Clive was curt and professional at most. But despite my best efforts to shake off his advances, Clive was starting to look at me through rose-coloured lenses.
"Rule 1 about being a Cyber Knight: Do not get invested. Do not get involved. You don't know me. You're not going to know me. I give the orders, you follow them. That okay with you, runner?"
Scorpion chuckled in a rare display of audacity.
"Loud and clear, boss. Loud and clear. I'm just sayin', it'd be a particular shame to see a face like yours get twisted up, y'know what I mean?"
I divert my already-fractional attention away from the job I am planning and stare down the liability. "Maybe you should go, Clive. Get some rest."
"What?" Hands flew up in protest. "Hey now, boss, let's not get hasty. We're a team, right?"
"Go. That's an order. Now. I will find you next time I need a bodyguard."
Clive stares at me with shocked disbelief. "How you gonna find me? You don't even know where I-"
"I will find you." I stress. "Scorpion, you too. This is some next level slag. Until I figure out who's behind this, I've got to handle this one on my own."
He nods and begins reassembling his rifle. Clive grabs his maul and dips, slamming the door behind him. Scorpion leaves quietly with a nod.

I turn my attention back to the schematics in front of me. The back of my eye itches, some place that I can't scratch. Or maybe that's just my enthusiasm to try out my new implants. One thing's for sure, though. This was going to be a solo job.

[shards]

Here goes nothing.

My name is Calico Hotomatsu. I work for Cyberdyne Medical Tech. This is my job. I am supposed to be here.
Walk through front door. Say hi to security guard. Ignore the gun don't pay attention to the gun. Place clipboard on the conveyer belt, followed by a pack of gum, four paper clips and a pile of lint. Turn out my pockets in front of the guard. I unhook my ExecuTazer from the complementary leg harness it came with and add it to the pile, flash the cam my permit. Calico's permit.
I had to leave my DX4 at home. I feel naked. How I'm going to hack into anything from anywhere I have no idea.

"Clear." The guard announces, snapping me out of my daze.
I move through the metal detector unharmed. Collect my things. Think clear thoughts. Think calm thoughts. I am surrounded by cameras and sensors. One too many heartbeats per second could frag the entire operation.
This is where my entire reconnaissance mission ceased to be of aid. Here, customers of Cyberdyne walk straight through the grandiose neo-marble lobby to the elevators on the far wall, which will take them anywhere on the first ten floors of the building. Above that were ten floors of high-security research labs. They can only be reached via the employee entrance, off to the side. That's where I'm going.

The next gate is a turnstile. I watch as tired-looking corporate drones press their finger to a pad, wait for their name and a picture to show up on a screen, and walk through. Think clear thoughts. Think calm thoughts. I press my finger to the pad. A tiny needle clicks, in and out in half a second, puncturing a reservoir in the cyberskin fingerprint stuck to the pad of my finger. A light flashes up from the cryptoglass panel.
"Hotomatsu, Calico." The computer chirps, displaying a picture of a woman I'd never seen before today. There's a millimetre-thin layer of nanoputty masking my face, and it's the only thing standing between me and certain death. Think clear thoughts. I walk though the second gate unharmed. By the dome.

I inwardly breathe a sigh of relief as I see the security begin to lighten up. Just got to pass the retinal scan and I'll be in. I lean forward and look into the glass. It emits a welcoming ping and the last door slides open. I shamble into the corridor and wait for one of the elevators there. Waiting. Waiting. Thinking calm thoughts. Everything is fine. I pile into the elevator just like everybody else.

My name is Calico Hotomatsu. I work for Cyberdyne Medical Tech. This is my job. I am supposed to be here.

[shards]

Slag. Slag. Slag. Slag!
I plugged the system into the Matrix and it took those chummers across the wire all of one second to shut down all the power in the building. One person saw me. "What're you doing?!" He yelled. I hit him with my ExecuTazer and he when down like dome-fall. Fortunately, I had committed a significant portion of the blueprints to memory. With the power out, all the maglocks in the building went dead. Getting out was easier getting in.

Except apparently I didn't go unnoticed. That's why I'm here, running through the streets of downtown, being chased by two BraveStar rent-a-cops and some chumbag in a blue suit who won't give up the chase. My athletic abilities gave me the jump on the cops, but this guy just would not let up. Realizing that I wasn't going to outrun him I was forced to confront him.
The first thing I notice is that I'm staring down the barrel of a submachine gun. Four bullets flit past my face and thank fate for them missing entirely. This is a suicide mission. But it was a suicide mission from the beginning.
I close the gap between us in a second and a half. He hesitates, I pull my tazer out of its holster and jab him with it in the ribs. He takes the first hit like a champ but the second shot took his legs out from under him. I got lucky. Too lucky. I'm out of there faster than a cabbie in a lockdown.

If I can just make it to the Free Streets I'll be fine, but first I have to walk through Bravestar turf. I wasn't on particularly good terms with BraveStar. Not since I iced a banker in the middle of Washington St.
And that's exactly where I had to go.