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"Hmm… it's a pleasure working with you. I plugged in all the shards, so now I don't even have to try to hack anything. All the active accounts are already in my control. And there's a ridiculous amount of money here…"
I shrugged at Lucy's comment. At the moment, I cared very little about that. I needed to get to the lower level. And that meant taking the stairs…
"Back up…"
I hadn't even touched the door leading to the stairs when Lucy interrupted me.
"…I found an old file. The stairs were ordered to be mined. No one ever goes up or down them. The only way is through the elevator."
I frowned.
"That's bad…"
Closing my eyes, I thought for a couple of seconds.
"…Is the door mined?"
"Checking…"
Judy's voice made it clear that she would be guiding me from now on. Lucy had transferred all the data to her and was once again focused on the data and trying to swipe the money from the underground fighting club.
"…The door is clean…"
"Good."
I nodded my head and carefully opened the door a little. I activated my Kiroshis in several modes at once. And after making sure I could see the mines, I stepped onto the landing with a sigh. Alright… let's see what I can do…
I activated my Sandevistan and took my first step, a short push, and my foot was already touching the wall. Thankfully, these mines were below me, attached to the wall, and they used a laser beam. If it was broken, it would cause an explosion. So, once I was on the wall, above the mine, I pushed off again. Luckily, the landing here was short, so after pushing off the wall with the stairs, I flew right to the wall on the landing. Then I pushed off again…
It took me three minutes in my personal time to finally get to the lower level, but there were a few mines right in front of the door. So I adjusted my push and, grabbing my harpoon gun, drove the harpoon into the lower part of the floor above.
"Judy, can you make me a daemon to deactivate the mines?"
"One second…"
"Fuck, how did you do that, dude?"
Becca's voice was full of admiration and awe that I had gotten to the lower level.
"Sandevistan and strong legs… but I couldn't have climbed up that way… and it would be difficult to repeat a trick like that. I really need to talk to Viktor about installing synthetic muscles."
"With Vik, though?"
Becca scoffed at my words.
"That guy will try to talk you out of it."
"Why would he?"
I was genuinely surprised by Becca's words. He was a cautious guy, of course, and at first, he was against me installing new chrome, but that was only because he worried about his clients and required full rehabilitation.
"Well, Maine tried to work with him, but according to him, he was always talking him out of new chrome…"
"But you work with him…"
"Well… yeah…"
Becca's voice was a little surprised. She had apparently never thought about this twist of fate.
"It's all about the approach…"
"Huh?"
"Vik is a serious guy, and he doesn't like to rush. When I first came to him, he fixed my Sandevistan, and the only thing he wasn't against was replacing my optics, and that was only because everyone has them now, and replacing one piece of chrome with another doesn't affect the body's strain."
"Done…"
Judy's voice interrupted my conversation with Becca, and I opened her email and downloaded the daemon. Then I quickly deactivated all the mines on the landing. After that, I pushed my hand against the plate the harpoon was attached to and, pushing off, gave a command for it to unhook the cable from the harpoon itself.
"There's a guard post behind the door, but they're very relaxed."
"Can you distract them?"
"I can disable the cola machine and the TV."
"Do it."
It took barely a dozen seconds, and everything was done. Judy informed me of this, so I opened the door and, activating my Sandevistan, quickly passed the now-empty guard post. Then I quickly hid in one of the rooms, which turned out to be a changing room for fighters. At least, that's what I concluded from the huge number of lockers.
"Where to next? Where's the target?"
"Go down the hallway. There will be a fork, turn right, then there's a guard room…"
"Got it. I'll get to another guard room for now. I'm moving out…"
I activated my Sandevistan, left the room, and made it to the fork in the hallway. I turned in the direction Judy had indicated. The door I walked up to looked very massive. Just looking at a door like that makes you think about installing gorilla arms on yourself. The only thing that stops me is the fact that I understand that those arms wouldn't fit my style of work.
"Connecting to the door…"
I connected a cable to the door and immediately felt the heat of the deck, through which one of the netrunners was now working. I had no idea who it was, and it didn't matter.
"There are no cameras there. We only know our target is there from conversations, so be careful."
Judy warned me that they didn't know what was inside, so when the door started to open with a quiet hiss, I activated my Sandevistan.
That was probably the only thing that saved my life. A shot came from behind the door the very moment I slipped inside. If I had a normal, readily available Sandevistan, I wouldn't have had any time to react to it. Because the shot was fired by a man who was moving…
He was fucking moving, albeit slower than me.
And that meant he had a Sandevistan too, just not like mine.
Partially dodging the attack, I just winced at the feeling of buckshot tearing through my left arm. Honestly, at that moment, I wanted to fall to the floor and scream in pain. The only thing that stopped me was the fact that I was already used to working as a solo and I knew that if I fell out of acceleration, I was a corpse.
They wouldn't spare me.
This guy had no reason to let me live. He would just keep me on the brink of life and death long enough to get the names of my accomplices and the name of the client out of me.
I, of course, was not okay with that outcome.
My right hand grabbed the pistol from the holster, and I fired three shots to intercept him. One shot hit right in the barrel, tearing it apart. The fragments flew everywhere, so not only the shotgun owner got hit, but I did too.
My opponent froze. He had clearly fallen out of acceleration. I fired four more shots at his knee and elbow joints. Even if he had good chrome, my pistol was powerful enough to penetrate such obvious weak points.
Deactivating my Sandevistan, I saw my opponent fall to the floor.
"A-a-a-a-a-ah! You f-f-f-f-ucking son of a bitch!"
Staggering, I barely stayed on my feet. I went back to the door and closed it tightly.
"Can you hear me?"
"Are you okay?"
Judy's voice was a little shaky.
"Yeah… the target had a Sandevistan… and also…"
I looked around his office.
"…a duplicate surveillance system. He must have spotted me when I was calmly walking on the first floor."
"I'll kill you! I'll flatline you! You think you'll get away with this?!"
I winced a little at the idiot's screaming. I looked around, walked up to him, and, bending down, took the belt off his waist. He was a little confused by that, but I didn't care about his state. My left arm was seriously damaged; I needed to apply a tourniquet…
And that's what I did.
"Are you okay?"
Panam was very worried, so she butted into the conversation as soon as she heard about my opponent's Sandevistan.
"I think I'm gonna have to visit Vik and replace my arm… I got a few fragments from the exploding shotgun, but overall…"
"There's a commotion in the building. They realized you're inside."
"What do we do?"
"Nothing…"
Lucy was clearly calm.
"You plugged in all three shards, so I can easily lead them on a wild goose chase."
"That's good. I have your other shards, too. Connect to my eyes. Let's look at the office together. You can tell me where to put them."
"Alright… one minute…"
I took an injector from a special pouch and injected it into my shoulder. Normally, you inject it into your chest, or to be more precise, not far from the heart, as that's where all the medicine spreads fastest. But I wasn't too concerned about the fragments right now. I was more worried about the fact that my arm hurt, and the injector had analgesic properties, among other things.
"Alright…"
I sighed and looked at the office I was in. And the first thing that caught my eye was a golden pistol lying on this guy's desk.
"Ugh… you definitely don't suffer from a lack of self-importance…"
Walking up to the guy, I saw that he was passed out. I wondered why? His arms and legs?
I checked them, and my initial conclusions were correct: it was chrome, so the damage wouldn't cause any real harm.
Tch…
I noticed a wound from one of the fragments on his chest. It looked like something was damaged there… I took another injector and injected it into the man. Then I took my pistol and fired extra rounds into all the joints of his chrome.
"Okay, I've sent all of them in another direction. We have about fifteen minutes until they figure out that I just activated the security system there and gave Becca a chance to play with it. So let's search the office and get out of here…"
"Uh-huh…"
I got up and quickly walked around the office, showing Lucy all the tech that was there, as well as a safe that was glowing in one of the modes of my eyes.
"Okay…"
Then they told me exactly where to insert the shards and asked me to connect to the safe's port, which Lucy opened just like that…
"Um… jackpot?"
I looked in surprise at the handful of money chips lying in the safe. There were also data chips, and what was even better was that all of this wouldn't take up much space in my bag!
"Looks like it, but I wouldn't recommend it…"
"Hmm?"
"There could be tracking chips disguised as money chips, and without special equipment, it's impossible to tell remotely which ones are for tracking and which ones are for storing funds."
I sighed and closed the safe.
Cough…
The man came to, and I walked up to him and felt for his pulse.
"Alright, I'm heading out, then?"
"Yeah… Judy will guide you…"
I grabbed the man by the arm, but then I stopped. His screaming could attract unwanted attention. So I looked around the office one more time, but didn't find anything. I just walked around him, knelt down, took off his shoes, and then took off his socks, which I stuffed into his mouth. I used the shoelaces from his boots as a tie that would prevent him from spitting out the peculiar gag.
After thinking for a moment, I looked at the remaining shards from Lucy and inserted one of them into Houdini's port.
"Lucy, make sure he can't call anyone."
"Got it…"
"The path is clear…"
Judy told me that.
I opened the door, went outside, and walked down the hallway, just dragging the man behind me. He was grunting, trying to attract attention. But all the guards were somewhere else right now, so I calmly made it to the elevator.
"It's a little too lively at the post upstairs. They're getting ready to meet anyone who comes up."
"Got it… stop me one floor short…"
The elevator obediently stopped. I jumped a little and kicked out the top hatch of the elevator. Then I climbed onto the roof, where I attached my harpoon. After descending back into the elevator, I used the harpoon to pull my target up to the roof.
"What about the floors above?"
"They're residential, but according to the data, all the elevator doors there are welded shut, and there's a real armored plate blocking the stairwell."
"Got it. Then raise the elevator and open the doors… let them shoot at an empty cab…"
Just as I said, that's what happened. And the guards just kept shooting at the empty cab, using up their ammo.
"Okay, they've stopped… they don't understand what's going on…"
"Two of them are coming your way, three are still in their original spots, and two are standing at the doors, just like when you came in."
I sighed and activated my Sandevistan, feeling a slight burning sensation in my back. This meant I was on the edge. Another couple of minutes of my personal time, and I would start burning through nerves. My muscles were already hurting, which meant they couldn't handle such intense use.
Sighing, I jumped into the hatch and quickly emptied my pistol, just flatlining everyone. Then I deactivated my Sandevistan.
I climbed back onto the roof of the elevator cab, detached the harpoon, lowered my target into the cab, and with him, I walked toward the exit.
"Girls, what's going on on your end?"
"On our end?"
Panam smirked.
"Everything's calm. You definitely attracted a little attention, but they never figured out we were in their system. They just don't have good netrunners."
"They have netrunners, I'm just better…"
Lucy's voice was quiet and calm. She had just refuted Panam's words, who just grumbled a little. As I left the building, I activated my Sandevistan again and just shot both of the goons in the head. I don't like doing it, but it's not very convenient to take out opponents like that with one hand. So…
I grabbed the target by the leg and dragged him through the alleys, and soon the Thorton pulled up to me with the ladies on board. I threw the target in the trunk, and I got into the front seat.
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