After moving everything, I was off on my bike and headed back towards Sakura Street. The roads felt unsettling as I drove down them. I noticed it when I made trips to and fro for my errands earlier too, so this wasn't just a new thing. They were empty- or, at least, far emptier than they'd been in a long time.

There was way less traffic out and about, both on foot and otherwise. Even the ever-present homeless population had receded back into the alleys. Those were out and about quickly moved from one place to the next and kept their heads down.

It wasn't hard to tell why. The occasional patrol of the Blue Crusade had been joined by patrolling groups of armed corporate operators. Sentinel had ATVs moving about the streets as if we were in an active war zone, causing the air to spike with palpable tension.

They weren't the only culprits either. Raijin had a constant stream of flyers moving to and from their Raiju flying fortress. It felt like a war might break out at any minute. Logically, it was impossible with BosSpace's Orbital Piledriver still satelliting around the planet. Logic didn't really matter when it came to feelings though.

I parked my bike and uncomfortably worked my way to Carone's shopfront. It was especially unsettling when I walked past an alley and spotted a pile of corpses not far off from the main path. All young gangers, it looked like. They were shredded by an HMG. A bit of poking around would probably point toward one of Sentinel's ATVs.

I was searched by the bodyguards once more before I was allowed to enter, though they again passed over my Sidewinder and knife. The two terrible goons stepped out of the way, letting me into Carone's antique store. The lighting was just as poor as last time, with mostly flickering candles illuminating the store.

"Ah, Shiro… welcome back to my humble store." Yep, Carone's voice still sounded like a snake.

This time around he wasn't trying any shitty pyrokinetic intimidation tactics at the very least. "I got your message. You said you had a gig?"

"Potentially…" He stared into my eyes for a moment before leaning forward onto the counter. "You said you were good at subtlety? I need a… subtle touch."

"What is it?" I bounced cheerfully on my toes. Finally! Something I was good at!

"A client wants a… relocation of assets. A certain file. This-" He slid a data chip across the counter. "Also needs to be plugged into the terminal afterward. All without setting off any alarms. Twenty-four hundred Rayn for doing both silently. You in?"

Twenty-four hundred Rayn? Heck yeah! I was just in need of some more funds. That was a month's worth of my new rent. More importantly, I would be using my actual talents. "Chek."

"The target is Ajay Insurance." He pulled out his phone and sent me a message. "That's the file name and link to the firm's site."

A corporation, huh? Maybe because of how easy it was to knock over the transport; I didn't feel near the usual worry and paranoia. I checked the file on my HUD and grabbed the virus off the counter. It was an audio file, 'Malwort.Mp3' "Isn't this a job for a runner?"

"The client specifically asked for no Netrunners…" He stared at me for a moment and tapped at his chin. "Shouldn't be an issue. I was assured Ajay Insurance didn't have anything too impressive in terms of security."

That was a relief. Sure, I had a level in Net now, but I wasn't near good enough to bypass actual security. That, and it took me freakin' forever just to get through that one level. I definitely didn't have Net stuff in my future.

"Alternatively, I have a different… client. There's a five thousand Rayn bounty on the corporation." Carone casually leaned back and toyed with a few sparks. "Guess Ajay really knows how to piss people off. They want someone to throw enough dirt at the corp to shake the pond. I doubt someone of your… stature could do such a thing, but it is an option."

Bastards would be bastards. I was talking about Carone, of course. There was no reason to go about insulting my height…

Five thousand Rayn was incredibly attractive. Getting dirt on the corporation shouldn't be too hard either if I played my cards right. Dirty corporations were far from rare in this day and age.

To what extent does the dirt need to be? Something as simple as the CEO cheating on his spouse? Or something a little more complicated? I'd keep it in the back of my mind for now and focus on the first two objectives. "Chek. Thanks, Carone."

He snorted and headed for the back of the antique store. A causal wave snuffed out all the flames in the place, instantly making it dark. "See yourself out."

Glad to see something's never changed. He was still a jackass.

— — —

I leaned up against the wall of my new apartment, head lightly tapping on it. The slow beats of music played into my ears from my handheld radio. I summoned Crow's Canteen of Chaos and took and to a drink of it. Refreshing, pure water poured down my throat.

I poured most drinks from the nearby vending machines into the canteen, so I had a full list of stuff I could drink basically at will for free. The original water that was in the canteen when I got it was just too good though. If only for that, it was a priceless artifact.

Hmm… maybe I should get some kind of acid and test that too? Or lava- would that even count as a liquid? Not to drink, of course, but never knew when I needed to melt something. What else could I throw in here?

I dropped the canteen. Midair, a shadow caught it, enveloping the bejeweled relic. The shadows quickly faded, taking Crow's Canteen of Chaos with it. Without the temporary distraction offered by the canteen, I settled back against the wall and checked my notes.

Things were… well, they weren't looking great. Go break into Ajay Insurance, Shiro! It'd be a quick and heavy payout- not. There was a reas the pay for this one was particularly high. It matched the danger.

It'd been two days since my first meeting with Carone. I'd spent most of that time studying through the Net and watching the insurance company. I realized almost instantly the true extent of trouble I stepped into after the first day.

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Plan A was originally to break in at night and do this sneakily. I needed more intel though, which started my last couple days of surveillance. Ajay Insurance sat closer to the southern end of Little Yukoto, so it was rather close. I ended up setting up at a Neo-seafood restaurant just across the street.

Yeah, it was as disgusting as it sounded. If I had to eat one more imitation shrimp, I might just puke. Seriously! Who thought imitating something spongy like shrimp was a good idea? There was no way real shrimp was as spongy and disgusting as the synth stuff, right? Why would people even eat such a dish?!

Thankfully, I had quite a bit of money saved up so eating at the place didn't hurt me financially. It was a bit expensive, and at most a fraction as good as Big Mike's burgers. Really, I just wished I could've camped out inside of Big Mike's.

It was food that offered a wider variety of nutrients, if nothing else. I was a growing girl and really needed them. Synth foods were altered to be semi-healthy. 'Course, I was better off eating real food, but that was way out of my price range.

While I lurked across the street, I checked the place out on the Net. Cyberstalking was surprisingly easy once I got the hang of it. Getting Net to one hadn't turned me into a hacking god or anything, but it did improve my use of the Net, its operating systems, and how to get around.

Unfortunately, I needed a deck—whether external or internal—to really deep dive in. I could only do so much with my phone. It'd be nice to actually get a use out of my jacks too. They were… well, they were kinda useless? I just didn't have much stuff that could interact with them. At least, not without risking my Neural Link being fried by a virus or something.

I shifted once more, trying and failing to get comfortable. I really needed to look into getting some furniture soon. Maybe once I had some more money? I only had eight hundred in my account, and half of that was reserved for buying food.

Hmm… I'm getting distracted again. Where was I? Ah- right- Ajay Insurance. It was a basic financial firm. Small time corp run by the CEO, Ajay. I stalk- investigated him across various social media pages, rather easily keeping track of him.

The guy lived a very extravagant life. It wasn't hard to follow his prints. Every week, starting about a year back, he threw or attended massive yacht parties at various marinas. He loved to post all of it to his social media.

Speaking of social media, he was obsessed with it. Every day, there were at least three separate posts. Most of it was bragging about his money or his body—which was most definitely an artificial sixpack. His obvious love of attention could be a potential if I needed it.

His social media postings brought something to my attention. The financial firm he owned was quite small in size, and acted as an insurance agency specifically for civilian chrome. It definitely didn't have the money flow to support Ajay's extravagance.

He wasn't a trust fund baby either. I found records of him in the foster system, so it wasn't inherited money. There was something weird going on here. I needed to be careful so I didn't get caught in whatever it was.

As for the gig? I needed access to their server banks. There wasn't any other way of going about this, to be honest. If I was any good at Netrunning, I'd be able to just hack in semi-remotely and grab whatever I needed. That wasn't in the playbooks, though there was a workaround.

In this technological age, server rooms were practically vaults. They tended to be the most secure places in a building, even for small corps since they were the core of the Net Architecture. They were like throne rooms in castles.

If I accessed the server from the actual server room, I'd probably be able to bypass the Net Architecture and any other cyber security defenses as an 'Admin' rather than an intruder. Basically, I'd be pretending to be the king. If I could just get into the physical server room itself, it'd be smooth sailing.

That's where Plan A came in. Before any great heist, it was important to get the lay of the land. Ajay Insurance sat on the second floor of an office building. It featured a grand window across the entire space that allowed me an easy view of the building's internals from across the street at the neo-seafood place. The dual-zoom augment in the Advant Phantom made it even easier to look in.

During the day, there was a constant flow of workers and clients moving around. The building fully shut down at eight every night. The original plan was to strike at night.

During my prep, I even managed to find Aythryn City's Archives and access them through the Blue Crusade backdoor, so I had the building's blueprint on hand. Thanks to Eidetic Schematic, I instantly memorized the blueprint. It was rather nice that the Perk applied to all kinds of plans and prints.

Unfortunately, Plan A got chopped almost entirely once Mr. Ajay activated the security on the first night. Two turrets overlooked the room and motion sensors sat at every junction from the looks of things. The turrets were some high-end stuff too. I'd seen the model before. Truly nasty pieces of work.

They were Errant Security's AR-Lockdown model. I'd have to get closer to tell which version exactly, but it was trouble regardless. They were set to gun down anyone in their field except for those whitelisted.

Sneaking by wouldn't work either. They had dual detection with heat sensors and cameras. Each one sat standalone with its own daemon so a Netrunner couldn't brute force a shutdown and they even had an eight-hour internal battery pack in case of power outages. The turrets were very expensive, and very out of place in the small corp's building.

They were placed at good points to overlook the entire room. I managed to sneak by a single ESAR-Lockdown a while back, but I had zero confidence in getting past two. The model's only weakness was its detection radius. That didn't matter with two of them set up in ideal spots.

I did some rough calculations on timing and positioning, mentally walking through the blueprint of the place. I'd have to be perfect down to the second if I wanted even a chance at getting by. That wasn't a risk I was willing to take.

From what it looked like, my best shot was to get into the server through an alternative route. Wasn't exactly in my wheel house, but the potential payouts were enough to make me adapt on the fly.

How would I get in though? Pretending to be IT was simple and easy. An IT gal just showing up could cause some suspicion though… I took another drink from the canteen and tossed it into the shadows. It was my best bet at the moment.

I researched the company a bit more and didn't see any mention of an IT department. The corp was tiny, so there was a high likelihood they didn't have one in-house. Probably contracted the IT work out to a different company.

A plan slowly started to build itself up. I needed them to call me in. Well, not me, but their normal IT company. Then, I could sneak in as IT, get access to the servers, and profit. It had a lot of moving parts I would need to think about, and I would need a bunch of tools I didn't have at the moment, but the plan looked better and better the more I thought about it.

I'd need to go get a deck before anything else. Accessing the servers just with my jacks or phone sounded like an extraordinarily bad idea. And what kind of IT person showed up without a deck? It was the bare minimum requirement for plan B.

There were a bunch of other minor things too, but I could work those out in time. The most important part of the plan was getting them to call in IT. Hmm… I pulled up a map of the city's infrastructure. That backdoor into the Blue Crusade proved itself more and more useful, even if it was expensive.

The map showcased every access tunnel, water pipe, and powerline beneath the city. It even showed a few entrances to the largely abandoned Underground deep beneath the city. Of course, Eidetic Schematic copied it all down, permanently memorizing the blueprints of Aythryn City's infrastructure.

'Course, the underground infrastructure wasn't part of the Underground. The infrastructure just happened to be underground, but it couldn't be confused with the Underground further under the ground. My head spun. Stupid Shiro, giving yourself a headache.

Hmm… I needed some more time to think things through. I stopped and headed for a nice, warm shower. It was a bit of an issue drying my hair afterward. It was getting longer and longer these days. Been awhile since I hacked it off back to short… maybe I should let it grow out for once? I think I looked better.

I took a while to clear my head. I even got on the Net and looked through a bunch of different furniture sites, planning what kind of furniture I wanted to get when I had the money. It was such a mundane concern that I felt a little silly using it as a momentary distraction from plotting a corporate heist.

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