2078: Highriders - 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 hum 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.

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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.”

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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 psy op 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 Arasaka 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 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.

Her left hand had found its way onto my right breast and she was using it as a plaything, squishing and fondling with my nipple.

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.

She gave me a naughty, knowing expression as I opened my eyes. The smart, heavenly soft mattress on her giant circular bed just barely compensated for her next maneuver, as she scraped her entire body along mine as she journeyed upward.

Her knees were straddled on either side of my head and her very wet pussy hovered directly over my face. She definitely had some bioware going on here, the natural lubrication was too quick, not to mention I could already smell an entirely different aroma than the normal musk that she had before, it was actually… a mix of strawberry and honey?

I went with the behavioral flow, meeting Lyla’s eyes with an eager anticipation, showing no surprise before my lips surged forward and clamped down on the upper portions of her labia, attacking her clit with my tongue. It really did taste like the aforementioned flavors and it was clearly something Julia already knew about.

My arms came up and clamped around her upper legs, keeping her in place as my tongue got to work.

Lyla’s breathing and moans sped up quickly and it wasn’t long before I had her bucking to get some relief from the pleasure I was instilling.

I didn’t allow that, my arms keeping her core glued to my mouth.

“Uh, fuck! Uh, Julia… wai- wai-”

Unfortunately, the behavioral imprint and the included notes from Blue Eyes indicated that Lyla had a slight fetish for being dominated. Especially ironic given her position was to dominate others in every other facet of her life.

She fought me every step of the way for nearly six minutes according to my system clock. Her arms and hands, which had been furiously stimulating her breasts and pinching her own nipples, fell flat as she exploded into a climax after I created a slight vacuum pop right on her clit between my lips.

As she was lost in her own pleasure, my right hand let go.

I reached for the much less known Ms. Studd waiting on the bedside table.

Unlike the Mr. Studd which was a common male implanted cyberware that gave them effectively unlimited endurance in carnal activities. The Ms. Studd was an external sex toy, which was a highly advanced dildo that came with a matching price. This was because it was effectively a wearable bioware. At one end, it clamped down on the user’s vagina, smartly molding biomimic material flowed directly inside the pussy to perfectly match the interior volume for perfect stimulation, then had a Realskin bioware penis and double balls on the other side that would give my old Sir John Phallustiff some competition in the size department.

Just putting the damn thing on nearly had me halfway to my own climax.

I gave a look down between my legs and could only inwardly marvel at how seamless it looked down there now. You had to squint to see the joins where the Ms. Studd had affixed itself over my groin area.

Judy would’ve killed for something like this, but it was just too expensive to really justify, even with my multi-millionaire merc bank accounts. They were made in orbit and the bioware maintenance also had a substantial price tag.

I slid myself down from under Lyla’s legs, got on my own knees and in one smooth thrust, impaled her on the Ms. Studd from behind.

I groaned at the action, as the bioware device reciprocated the action perfectly into my own core.

Lyla gasped, looking back at me with huge eyes, filled with pleasure and shuddered, utterly unable to articulate anything out of her mouth. My arms snaked around her torso, my left hand grabbing a breast, whilst my right quested downwards for my fingers to attack her clit. I gave one long in and out stroke, my hips slapping against her bountiful butt.

That was as far as my restraint went and I began ramming into her with abandon.

It was of course, Murphy’s Law that just as both of us were in the middle of this delightful session 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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A/N: More hijinks in LEO for V to come. Enjoy your weekend and stay frosty folks.