Chapter 64

First thing I did once I said goodbye to Vik, and stopped in to chat with Misty was call Wakako.

 

*Wakako! My favorite fixer! How are you?*

 

*What do you want?* She demanded instantly, my attempt to flatter obviously revealing my intentions.

 

*You have a guy looking to work with you. Jackie Welles?*

 

*I’m aware, what about him?*

*So he’s not half bad. Got the skill, and the desire to push to the top. Bit of a gonk though. You’ll do best by matching him up with someone, let him be the muscle and all that… But when you finally meet with him. Can I be there? Pleeease?* I begged, not even bothering to keep any sense of self respect.

 

Wakako let out a sigh and the line went quiet for a minute. *What nonsense are you trying to put together?*

 

*Okay so Jackie, nice guy, I like him. When he said he was trying to work with you. I had a thought. ‘Motoko you could help this guy finish this gig, and have a bit of muscle that you could trust on some gigs.’ But Jackie’s a bit of a gonk. Refused my help cause I’m a kid. So now when he meets you… I need to tease him a bit. Please Wakako! I just want to be there in person so he walks into the room and just sees me already there! The look on his face! You can’t tell me it won’t be funny!*

 

*Girl. I’m a professional. I don’t do things just because they will be funny.*

 

*I’ll give you a discount on my next gig. Two thousand off.* I said instantly.

 

The line went silent.

 

*I will inform you if he completes the gig.* She admits frankly without any sign that she had to walk back on her words.

 

Wakako! I love you.

 

*Cool. So-*

 

*I have a gig for you.* She said suddenly and my brain chirped as I got a text.

 

*Oh? It’s been a while. I expected you to be throwing gigs at me a lot sooner?*

 

*You’ve been busy enough without my assistance.* She says in a low tone. *But if you have so much more interest in work, I’ll have more gigs for you soon.*

 

Then she hung up on me.

 

Wakako! I hate you.

 

I sighed and checked the information. Humming a bit I sent back a confirmation I would get it done and turned around.

 

—–

 

This was gonna be interesting. I couldn’t help but think as I looked over the building. It was an office building. They had some data that a client of Wakako’s wanted. I was stealing from a small company.

 

Entity Retail LLC.

 

What did they do?

 

No idea. Their company net page was basically full of corpo slang talking about using intelligent solutions to solve problems ect ect.

 

The company could literally do anything if you actually believed its slogans. But that didn’t matter. I was here to steal some information, nothing more.

 

So I parked in a garage and walked in the front door of the business skyscraper.

 

The company only rented one of the offices on the eleventh floor so it wasn’t like I had to sneak all the way through.

 

The building lobby was basically empty, just a generic corporate business lobby that I walked right through to the elevator. It took me a few seconds to know that hacking the elevator was a no go. It would take too long, so I walked past it to the stairs.

 

The stairs were secured here at the bottom, but that took me far less time to break into than the elevator security, and then I was in the stairwell. Slowly I marched up the stairs actually enjoying the exercise a bit. Between this and training with Jackie I was getting a little physically tired.

 

I peeked through the door that was marked 11 to see what I was dealing with.

And it was a hallway.

 

Right this wasn’t some Arasaka Corpo office with HMGs around every corner. It was just an office building.

 

I slipped in to look around. The hallway led to a main foyer that had three different corporations that I could see, at least based on the doors.

 

It took me about thirty seconds after finding the corporation that I wanted to turn around and head back into the stairwell.

 

On the door was the office hours, and considering I had seen a bunch of people inside?

 

Now it was time to wait for closing time.

 

—–

It took a few hours, and if not for the ability to send texts and a really nice view off the roof of the building I would have been annoyed.

 

I had thought about heading home, but by the time I actually reached the apartment I would have had to go out again anyways.

 

So I spent a few hours enjoying the view from the top of the twelve story tower, while waiting for the office to close down…

 

Well that and hacking into the building security.

 

There was an access port on the roof, and I mean…

 

It was just sitting right there.

 

Sure the security was pretty good, and some of the different floors’ security was even better, but I had a few hours to burn, and it was something to do.

 

So I breached in, and poked around. Taking over a few of the cameras in the system, deleting some files that had me on the camera, even if the image was blurry thanks to my Kiroshi. You know fun things.

 

I was watching through the cameras as the time finally came, the office started clearing out over the next thirty minutes, until finally a man exited and turned off the lights on his way out.

 

Go time.

 

I disconnected and headed down, the security of the building already broken before me, so nothing stopped me.

 

The office had its own secure system, and it was better than normal building security.

 

It was just unfortunate that building security still had access to the office per their lease. So since I had already broken one system, I had given myself security administrator access to the office.

 

I didn’t even have to hack the system. It simply beeped and let me in.

 

The office was dark, and a little spooky, but I fixed that by turning the lights on and started looking around. I needed to find the boss’s office, and it took me a few minutes before I spotted it. The door was locked, and it actually had a private security pad.

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Which was hilarious because I recognized the pad, it was one you could buy from basically any store for a few eddies.

 

The security was worse than the office itself. I suppose it was just meant to keep the workers in the office out.

 

Thirty seconds later I was in, and exploring the boss’s office.

 

The man obviously thought highly of himself. Paintings on the walls. Golden doo dads on the desk. A fancy computer rig.

 

I woke it up, and it took me ten seconds to find the password written on a note nearby. It was almost sad that I didn’t even have to breach in. I accessed the system, and then jacked in.

 

Found the files the client wanted…

 

And stole a few extras for me. I would trade it in at the Dewdrop for something maybe.

 

Then I shut the computer down and whistled as I headed out.

 

I even shut the lights out on my way out the door. Used the elevator which I now had security access to use, to hit the bottom floor and walked out.

 

As I climbed into the Quadra, I sent a message to Wakako with the data.

 

Gig complete.

 

—–

 

“Finally!” I grumbled as I managed to get a new bit of code to compile. I was working on Weapon Glitch. Clearing out the jumbles of bad code, and trying to smooth out its process time. If my estimate was right. I could drastically increase the activation speed.

 

But more interesting was the fact I knew this Quickhack could be used on multiple people at a time.

 

The skill to do something like that was beyond me at the moment. I simply had no idea how to bounce a hack through multiple people, but it was possible, and it was something I wanted.

 

I still remember the scene in edgerunners when the entire group of Maelstrom had all their weapons and Cyberware malfunction suddenly from a single Netrunner.

 

That was edgerunner shit. Lucy, and Kiwi were at that level. The experience, Tech, and skill to pull it off.

 

I wasn’t, not yet anyways, but I just had to aim for that, and eventually the system would get me there.

 

I shook my thoughts away and stretched, the code compiled. I had managed to for at least a small section of the massive program to clean it up.

 

Now I just needed to do that like a thousand more times.

 

“Ugh. Stupid jerks putting out shitware. If I ever find out who fucked this code I’ll kill them.” I promised as I laid back on the couch.

 

I could use a nap.

 

No one was bugging me at the moment. Jun was at work. Wakako had her gig completed the same day. Regina was still quiet. Hiromi was dealing with homework. Ichi and Malcolm were both enjoying their wealth from the scav cleanup.

 

All was good.

 

I sighed.

 

“Another thousand snarls to go.” I reminded myself and rose up putting my hands back against the keyboard and starting on the next section of snarled goofy code.

 

*Intelligence Leveled up!*

 

I blinked at the sudden alert, I had barely been able to fix a single line of code before the alert popped up.

 

Intelligence 8!