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"I'm in the network. The cameras are under our control in about… now."
Lucy reported to me the moment they would be able to prevent me from being detected by the cameras.
"Ugh… I could have handled this myself. They don't have any defenses at all. It's like they don't care if they get hacked."
Judging by her voice, Judy was a little disappointed by the lack of a challenge, and she was just grumbling for the sake of grumbling.
"You're too harsh on them, Smarty-Pants. The thing is, we only found out about this place because of Regina, and you have no idea how much money she shelled out for it and how many strings she had to pull…"
Lucy's voice was slightly reproachful.
"Enough with the chatter. You two can have your netrunner fun, Cherry had her fun while we were driving, and now Ghost is going to have his fun. And I'm jealous."
"I hope your fun doesn't come from a party, but from a really good shooting range we'll go to with the whole crew at the end of the first week of jobs."
Pff!
"Don't scoff. I heard once during one of the lectures at the Arasaka Academy that the corpos have a really cool shooting range where they train their employees in a combat-like situation, a kind of combination of braindance, virtual reality, and a regular shooting range. If you behave, I'll try to get more details from her, and then through Regina, we can find out where we can find something like that without having to deal with corpos."
"That sounds interesting…"
"Well, there you go. Even Judy would be interested in that, and I, by the way, want to shoot something! I really do!"
"And what do you want? To shoot something, or let's say, for me to make some real ramen, and not the garbage they make in fast-food joints?"
"You know how to make that?!"
"Well, finding the recipe is not a problem for me…"
I shrugged.
"And while you can't expect the excellent results of the best restaurants for the elite, I think I can make it much better than in some third-rate greasy spoon."
"Alright, I'll shut up and stop complaining, but you owe me some pork ramen!"
"You'll get it."
"And I want a mega-big portion!"
"You'll get it…"
"Good…"
Becca's voice was glowing with pleasure. It wasn't hard for me to please the maniac.
"And yeah, you have a new call sign now."
"Hmm?"
"Since you're so obsessed with food that you'll do anything for it, from now on, you're Glutton."
"Hey!"
"Enough with the chatter. We have the map of the building and the lab rooms. I'm sending it to Ghost now…"
"Uh-huh, you'll also get a call sign… but for now, the only thing that comes to mind is Snowflake. I got the map. I'm on my way."
"Pff! So original! By the way, Ghost, Kiwi called me and asked if we needed another netrunner…"
I sighed.
"What do you think, for now, Snowflake?"
"Well, I understand that it might be a bit much, but she's my mentor… it's… difficult for me to just say no to her like that."
"Alright, no more specifics in our conversations. Just general phrases and call signs."
I slowly approached the alley where the only known entrance to the lab was, and after activating my Sandevistan, I quickly ran down it to get to the open garage, where there were some thugs who were pretending to fix a car. Naturally, the trio of idiots was immediately knocked out, and then I inserted the shards with Lucy's programs into them. After that, I turned off my Sandevistan.
"Snowflake, get to work…"
"I see three signals…"
There was alarm and some tension in Lucy's voice.
"As for your question… is there a special reason why you're willing to vouch for her? Besides the fact that she's supposedly your mentor."
"What do you mean?"
Lucy's voice became more tense.
"He means that we're all professional solos, and even though our first job happened pretty spontaneously…"
Judy decided to have a dramatic pause, but Panam didn't support her in that and finished for her.
"But you don't really think that after the first job, we didn't buy dossiers on you and your whole crew from a fixer, do you?"
"Man, my friend… you're right on the money… you're right. She's not exactly Kiwi's apprentice…"
"Glutton, did you not get the memo about call signs? Just because they can't hack us doesn't mean we shouldn't be careful."
"Glutton…"
Tch… "Snowflake, Ghost, I didn't agree to that call sign… fuck… they already know too much, and staying silent will only turn them against us. Do you want that?"
The last question was clearly addressed to Lucy.
"I… no…"
"So?"
Judy decided to rush them. I, in turn, calmly walked up to the only door that led down, carefully and quietly opened it, and then started slowly descending. All the while, I was listening to their conversation.
"In short… I think Ghost said that he studied at a cool academy?"
"Yeah…"
I hadn't kept that a secret.
"…Snowflake also studied, but there, instead of learning, there were Spartan laws, and they were trained for dirty work. She's one of the few who survived… she managed to escape… but her socialization was nonexistent… Have you read that very old story, The Jungle Book?"
"No…"
All the girls said that at the same time, and I even stopped and raised my eyebrows in surprise.
"I'm just guessing…"
My voice became very quiet and careful, and I even stopped so I wouldn't fall down the stairs from surprise. It's not every day you find out that a small little pest who's obsessed with guns… No, I have to clarify that.
"…are you saying you've read it?"
My voice was dripping with skepticism, which clearly didn't go unnoticed.
"Hey, I really love to read! I never thought I'd have enough eddies for paper books, at least I didn't until I found out you guys eat real food all the time, so if I work at your pace, I might have enough for paper books, too. But I can definitely afford access to an online library!"
I shook my head.
"Your call sign is no longer Glutton. From now on, you're Bookworm."
"Huh?"
"Come on… you read books… among all my friends, you're the second one who does that. The first was my mom, who passed that love on to me…"
And that was true. In my past life, I also loved to read, and David read books too, though not in very large quantities. He clearly preferred fun stories about powerful solos who dominated the world with their charisma.
Did I judge him for those tastes?
No.
In my past life, at one point, I got hooked on Donkova, even though I used to think it was just pulp fiction not even good enough to wipe your ass with. The pages in those books were too inconvenient for that. So you go through different phases in life, and different kinds of literature can appeal to you in those phases. Maybe with time, he would have read something more serious…
"In short, from now on, you're Bookworm. And that's final. As for what you started talking about and why you brought it up… You're saying it seemed like she was raised by wolves in the wild, and your mentor, your mentor for Snowflake, was the one who socialized her?"
"Well, as much as she could, but yeah…"
"I'm done… and yeah, she was the one who introduced me to society. I owe her… but she's very distrustful and always told me that you can't trust ANYONE. Not even her. In short, I just want to show her that you can trust people."
I sighed.
"Let's talk about this a little later… after the job, I'll contact a fixer and order an extended dossier on your mentor. If she's not into some deep shit, I'll at least give her a chance to work with us. I'm not promising she'll join the crew, but she'll have a chance to work with us…"
"Thank you…"
"You're welcome…"
I shook my head and continued my descent.
"There are four thugs in the room. And there are no doors or anything that could muffle sound, so be quiet if you don't want five more people to come running…"
I sighed.
Man…
The door opened quietly, and I activated my Sandevistan. Two seconds of real time later, I turned it off. All the opponents were softly laid out on the floor. I was lucky that they were in the middle of the room, playing cards. They were using some old boxes as chairs and a bigger box as a table.
"Snowflake…"
"I'm on it…" she started hacking again.
"There's an access point nearby. Can you put a shard in there, too?"
Judy marked the location of the access point on my map, and I calmly walked up to it. After waiting for her to open the door for me, I went inside and inserted a shard into the port.
"We're gonna be rich…"
"Hmm?"
"We got lucky. This lab just sold its stock. There are a ton of bucks in their accounts, so if we push it all through offshore accounts, we'll be rich. I would even say very rich. The batch must have been a big one…"
"Can you find out who bought it, and also try to find out about other labs?"
"There's definitely nothing here about others, but I can get a list of the buyers."
"We need to give that list to a fixer. Let them send their grunts to clean up those loose ends."
"Uh-huh…"
I left the small room and continued my way through the drug lab's hideout. Two things helped me maintain my composure and not kill all the thugs I met. The first was that we could get money from them, which Lucy was doing while Judy was guiding me through the building. The second was that they were all going to die anyway. After I plant the bomb, I'll go back and finish them off, just so they don't suffer…
But they'll die after we get everything we need from them…
I sighed.
"Two ahead."
"Copy that…"
My Sandevistan was active again, and I calmly went into the room and knocked out two more, inserting the shards into them.
"Damn, with this kind of work speed, we just need another netrunner! I can't keep up with all the data coming in! Slow down a little!"
Inhale… Exhale…
That was dangerous to do…
"How much do you trust her?"
"Huh?"
"Your mentor…"
"Well… enough…"
"Can you set up a remote connection and transfer some of the tasks to her?"
"Yeah…"
"Connect her."
"Ghost…"
"I'll take responsibility. We just can't stay here any longer. We don't have control over that much information, and at any moment, either a new shift for these thugs could arrive, or an unscheduled shipment of reagents, or some other crap…"
"Yeah, I can."
"Ghost…"
"Smarty-Pants, I'm not happy about it either, but on the other hand, we only took Snowflake on our first job because Bookworm vouched for her. So we'll give her a chance on credit, if you will… alright, everyone, stop talking. Snowflake, connect her."
A couple of seconds passed, and I heard a slightly annoyed voice.
"I'm listening."
"Alright, listen up and don't interrupt… Snowflake recommended you…"
A sarcastic scoff came from the other side.
"Yeah, yeah, I'm that unoriginal… You'll be working remotely. We'll only be using call signs. I'm Ghost. The girls you know are Snowflake and Bookworm. My partners are Cherry and Smarty-Pants. Your job is to hack the data I give you access to. You'll download everything you can about the 'glitter,' that's the top priority—the labs, the buyers, everything you can find. If you have time left over, you'll hack the personal accounts and transfer the eddies through offshore accounts. Snowflake will give you the account number for the final transfer. If you do a good job, you and Snowflake will get a big share of these credits, since you're the ones who earned them with your hard work. Are the conditions clear?"
"Yeah…"
"Good. While you're working with us, your temporary call sign is Mentor. Now get to work, because I'm moving on. And yeah, there are two laptops here, so the data from them is going to flood the network now…"
And I inserted two shards into the laptops, which made Lucy groan, and Kiwi gave a surprised grunt. It seemed she had just been given access to the network her apprentice was working on and had seen the amount of work that lay ahead.
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