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"David..."
"Yeah?"
"The Clouds has a tech floor; you can get to the staff rooms from there."
"Got it..."
I got out of the car, knowing the girls had already hacked the nearest cameras, so no one could have noticed the start of my movement. I calmly got to the elevator doors and slotted a shard into the terminal. Thankfully, all terminals have a port for techs to work in.
The girls immediately caused an "error" with the elevator, which opened on one of the floors and let the passengers out, then closed. But it didn't stay stuck; it came to my floor, where I calmly got in with my camo already on and went up to the Clouds' tech floor, where the elevator opened again. And that's where it "froze."
I slowly got out of the elevator and looked around.
"Servers..."
"Yeah, but not all of them are here. The most important info is stored in the staff rooms."
"Got it..."
I slowly walked through the room, not forgetting to slot a couple of shards in so the girls could work more freely in the Clouds.
"Hmm... their ICE is pretty good..."
Kiwi was genuinely surprised by the state of the ICE in the Clouds.
"Yeah, you know how many rich suckers come here? If the ICE was weak, they would have been zeroed out a long time ago... And the Clouds wouldn't be this popular..."
Judy decided to clarify the situation.
"Girls, you work, don't talk..."
"We are working... an elevator will be coming soon that you can take to get to the rooms you need."
And sure enough, an elevator arrived, and I got in...
I went up to the right floor and calmly got out of the elevator. I then walked slowly and carefully through the rooms, finding another server room. I was running into people here, but my Sandevistan had helped me out of tougher situations, so after ten minutes of real time, I got to the room where, according to the girls after they hacked another Clouds server, Evelyn was supposed to be. And she was there in a terrible state...
The door quietly opened, and I walked into the room...
I went up to the girl, who seemed to notice nothing, and slotted a shard into her port.
"Pull the data and send it to our ripperdoc."
"Got it..."
I moved to the wall and started to wait. And I had to wait for a while. At least thirty minutes, after which Kiwi spoke to me.
"Well... our ripperdoc gave his verdict."
"And?"
"Her doll chip was literally burned out. But she can be helped. She'll never be a doll again, of course, because the parts of her brain that the chip connects to are damaged, but in general, after some therapy, she'll be able to return to a normal life."
"How's our Moxie?"
"She's in shock..."
"Hmm?"
"The head of the Clouds knew that Evelyn wasn't okay, but he didn't look for a ripperdoc for her. He chose to sexually assault her a couple of times instead."
"Uh... but she's as stiff as a board..."
"Well, from what we gathered from the available data, Parker was blowing him off, so he decided to take advantage of the situation."
I sighed...
"Alright, I'm heading to the boss..."
"You're going to kill him?"
"No, Judy..."
"But if I..."
"Judy, if you ask me to, then yeah, I'll zero him out. But first, why don't you calm down a little and think about the consequences."
"Consequences?"
"You have a lot of acquaintances in the Clouds... think about the consequences for them..."
"But..."
"Just think about it... if I zero him out... who's going to take his place? Will he be better? Will your acquaintances have an easier life because of it, or will you just get your righteous anger out, but your acquaintances will just have a harder life?"
"I... I understand... I can change my mind if I decide not to zero out Woodman now?"
"Of course."
"Alright... then... what do you want?"
"First, we'll get into his office. Then you'll hack his computer and put whatever I ask on his monitor."
"Got it..."
Getting to Woodman's office wasn't hard. He was sitting in there, eating a massive burrito. Just the sight of this guy literally shoving that junk into himself, and with pleasure, made me feel nauseous.
"Alright, ladies..."
The computer monitor flickered.
"Hello, Woodman..."
"What? What the hell?! What's going on?!"
"You probably don't understand anything... you're thinking, 'what the hell is going on here?'"
"I need to contact security... have them..."
"A check of the ICE won't help... the entire Clouds is in my hands. For example, everything in your office is going to turn off right now except for the computer..."
And the girls immediately made my words come true.
"And now everything's going to turn back on..."
And again, the girls quickly followed my instructions.
"How long do you think it's going to take me to destroy the Clouds with this kind of power? For example, to leak all the info you've gathered on your clients?"
"You motherfucker... they'll find you..."
"You're probably very upset right now. Maybe you're even threatening me, saying they'll find me, they'll ruin my life... Maybe. But I have no doubt in my skills, and you won't be able to find me. So..."
"What the fuck do you want?!"
"I want you to pay me..."
"Huh?!"
"You see, while studying the data, I noticed a case that was very interesting to me as a curious person... someone hacked the Clouds and burned out your doll's chip..."
"So this is all because of that whore?!"
"I'm interested in working with this flesh... so I've decided to give you an ultimatum. You forget about her existence, and I... don't destroy your life."
Of course, I could have just quietly taken Evelyn out, but in this situation, that would be an unnecessary risk. She would have been looked for either way. But if I scare Woodman a little, he'll spend some time trying to strengthen the Clouds' ICE. And fear will play its part...
"I agree! I agree!"
"Good decision... now all the rooms are going to be locked down. All but two. Your office and the room where you're keeping the girl. Your job is to take the girl, wrap her in a blanket, and then take her to the elevator."
"But what about guarantees?!"
I didn't answer that question. Woodman didn't even flinch.
"What about guarantees?!"
After waiting a couple of minutes, I asked the girls to start a countdown. And since he wasn't in a hurry to follow our request, I asked them to empty all the accounts he was trying to hide from his overseers from the Claws.
"Fuck, how is this even possible?!"
Woodman jumped out of his chair and quickly went to Parker's room. After wrapping her in a blanket, he went to the elevator, which was already waiting for him. I was right behind him the whole time, and when the elevator doors started to close, I activated my Sandevistan and slipped inside, immediately hiding in the elevator's now-invisible space.
The elevator slowly started moving and went back to the tech floor, where I calmly picked up the girl and went to another elevator. A couple more minutes, and I got to the car, where I loaded Parker into the trunk.
"David?!"
"Judy, I know you guys are pros and can easily hack everything that can be hacked and hide the fact that this girl is in the car. But it's still better not to draw attention to ourselves..."
As soon as I was in the car, Panam smoothly pulled away and headed toward Viktor's clinic...
"So?"
They immediately sent me access to another fake account with laundered money, and I split the money between all the girls and myself. And then they sent me the data they had managed to download from the servers.
I sighed...
Viktor took us in, and when I put Evelyn on the chair, he quickly kicked everyone out of his clinic. Well, of course, he was going to operate on a girl, and watching that as an outsider... especially considering that even Judy, when asked about her friends, shrugged and said that they used to be friends, but not anymore...
In short, we were all kicked out of the clinic. Of course, he immediately told me the estimated cost of the work, and I paid it with a sigh.
"Well, should we wait?"
"What for?"
Judy shrugged, and we all looked at her in surprise.
"Care to explain?"
"Well... we helped her... we paid for her treatment... my even made-up debts are paid, and the guilt for not talking her out of this is also in the past. Now we can just go home."
I sighed.
"In short, home?"
"Yeah..."
I didn't argue, and we just got in the car and went home. On the way, I was thinking that I didn't understand how girls' minds worked. Why get involved in all of this if she didn't care about the future of her former friend?
Didn't she understand that the same people who hacked the Clouds and burned out the chip could hack her friend again? No, she must understand that very well...
"Why so deep in thought?"
"Oh, nothing..."
I could only shrug at Judy's question.
"He just can't understand you."
Kiwi joined the conversation.
"Hmm?"
"Well, you helped her... but she could still be... hacked again... or someone could even be hired to eliminate her..."
"But that's her problem now... I left a shard with a small sum of money at Vik's, which is enough for her to leave the city. The rest is up to her..."
Judy shrugged.
"Alright... that's enough, this is Judy's choice anyway, and we have to respect her choice."
"Yeah, we respect it..."
Becca shrugged.
"We just wish we didn't just respect it, but also understood it..."
"Yeah..."
But the conversation ended there. I decided to send Rogue and Regina a new batch of info that my girls had found... let them deal with it themselves. Especially since they had already sent me a decent amount of money for the last batch, which had helped me to restore my financial situation a little.
And at home... at home, I started making the cakes I had promised to make for my girls if they found Faraday...
And while making them, I wondered if we really needed to stay in Night City... it had gotten too noisy here, especially with V's last job... and if you consider that she would now start digging for a way to survive...
I sighed.
"Oh, you're already making the cream..."
I looked at Judy, who had appeared in the kitchen area. And when she said "cream," the other girls immediately started to gather around us. I immediately prepared myself for a fight to the death. After all, I knew perfectly well that every single one of them would try to stick a finger in the bowl of cream...
"Everyone, stop..."
My commanding voice made them freeze.
"First, your hands..."
"Huh?"
They looked at me in surprise.
"Your hands, did you wash them?!"
"Well..."
I gave Lucy a hard look, and she looked away, hiding her hands behind her back.
"If you don't wash your hands right now, I'll make you pay for it when you try to stick your dirty hands in the cream... and it won't be pretty."
"Well..."
They exchanged glances.
"Can we have some after?"
I gave Becca a hard look.
"No. But then you can have a little war... and without that, there will be no war for the cream, and if you try anything, I'll just stop making the cakes."
"We get it... we're going to wash our hands..."
Panam raised her hands in a gesture of surrender, after which she and the girls went to the bathroom, where the water soon started to run...
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