Natalie sighed demonstratively and shrugged her shoulders.

“Whelp, I think we should table this session until I have talked with Awadah.”

With that, she started the logout procedure, quickly followed by the others. I just surfaced again.

I watched the others take off their diadems, being happy that I did not need those things anymore. Yes, they were useful even for a Jack, to connect to any computer without the need of the usually large, bulky board, but they were clumsy in other aspects.

Particularly the resolution of the VR, visually, aurally, or for any other sense. Even a good VR felt like being underwater for me, so muted, diffuse, and muffled.

A thoroughly creepy feeling, that as far as I knew not a single Jack enjoyed.

That it took a bit shorter to shake off the disorientation from surfacing when one used a board was just a bonus.

When she had regained her focus, Natalie pulled out her com and started a call.

“Hey, Awadah, Natalie Reynolds here… Yes, I am well… No, that is not… No… Awadah, let me talk for a moment, ok? Alright, I and my people have looked into the job, and there is a problem… No, this is not about the money… No, I knew what they were willing to pay, and we all accepted that… No, the problem is deeper. No, how did you get that idea? No, the problem is that it is a fucking mousetrap.”

She seemed pretty agitated, but mostly just rolled her eyes.

“Yes, I am sure… wait a moment, I’ll put you on speaker.”

Now we all heard the answer from a man, with a very slight accent that I could not place:

“And what makes you think that is a mousetrap? I looked into it, and honestly, it is a milk-run.”

“It looks like a milk-run. The guards alone make it more complicated, but not by much. Thing is, we have met a Jack here in NYC and she helped us by hacking their com system.

While doing that she found that Shieldwall has a company of soldiers, not guards, ready at a moment's notice listening to those two thugs.”

“Wait a minute. Go back for a moment. A Jack, and she? You have met Firebird?”

Considering that he stressed the ‘she’ so much I assumed that Firebird was Melody’s handle.

Natalie shrugged and looked at me pointedly, while she answered:

“No, not Firebird.” I frowned but nodded.

“Her handle is Seraphim.”

From the com, we all heard a hard cough.

“Seraphim!?! You are telling me that Seraphim is here in New York? And you met her? Fuck, that is big news.”

The others looked at me surprised, and I just shrugged.

“Yes, she is in New York, and we met her, and she jumped in to help us. But can we get back to the important part?”

There was a moment of silence before Awadah answered: “The important part? Oh, yes, the information. How reliable is it?”

How reliable? As reliable as the data was in the Shieldwall system. Again Natalie looked at me, but this time I did not understand what she wanted from me.

Finally, Darren softly touched me on the shoulder and said softly: “We need to know how reliable the information is.”

I, equally softly, answered: “It is what I found in the system. I can not guarantee that it was not planted, but it looked legit. They had a fricking hunter-killer protecting that information. Unless they knew that it was me, or maybe Argo going in, that alone was severe overkill for a red herring.”

Natalie nodded.

“I would say pretty reliable. According to Seraphim, the link was protected in a manner that it would have stopped anybody local but Argonaughty and her from finding it.”

“Yeah, that is… ok, so they have a company of soldiers ready. And what? The job too risky for you?”

“Not for us, no. Remember, we learned about it because Seraphim has gone in and cut the link. We will be long gone before the soldiers will come knocking. But your clients won’t be. They will still be there, and inviting targets.”

“Ok, that could be bad for them. And what now?”

“How about you inform them about the situation and ask them if they still want the hit to go through. And if they want to, if it has to happen tomorrow. We might find another way if we have enough time to look into it.”

“Ok, I’ll ask them. But… no, not important right now.”

Mark exploded.

“What do you mean not important? Fuck man, we have to know that shit if we have to plan for it.”

“I assume you are one of Ms. Reynolds's partners? And compared to the news that Seraphim is in NYC it is simply not important.”

Not that that mollified Mark in the slightest.

“Seraphim? We are talking about a life-or-death situation and you are thinking that Seraphim is more important? She is not going anywhere. She will be here tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that. So why the fuck is her being here such a big deal that it is ‘not important’ that some girls might be slaughtered tomorrow?”

“So what? A few whores dying? There are more of them. There is only one Seraphim. Do you have any idea who she is?”

Oh wow, I decided then and there that I would not work together with Mr. Diouri if I could avoid it.

Natalie managed in the meantime to get between Mark and the com.

“Yes, we know who she is. Probably better than you, as we actually know her. And honestly, I find your lack of empathy for your fucking clients appalling.”

“Clients? Fuck, girl, these hookers could not even manage to get $30k for a hit. On a target with two bodyguards. Yes, I took the task, but seriously, they are unimportant. On the other hand, we have one of the best underground techs now available here, in Big Apple. That is important news. And a profitable one.

The fixer who gets her business is set for life. Fuck, he probably gets access to Spectre too. And I am the fixer who has the best chances of pulling it off.”

We all looked bewildered at Darren, who broke out into loud laughter. From the com came the irritated voice of Adawah:

“Ok, who is that now and why is that so funny?”

Natalie answered while Darren was still laughing:

“That is another of my partners, and I have no idea why he is laughing.”

The last part came out so frosty that I was surprised the room temperature stayed the same, and threw a poisonous glance at Darren, who slowly got himself under control. Still snickering, he finally answered:

“It is so funny because you are the second most unlikely fixer to get to work with her. Of course, the one most unlikely is probably out of business after he decided to steal around 6 million bucks from her. So congratulations, you are at the bottom of the list.”

Huh? I didn’t know that Darren knew about Max.

We all heard the scorn in Adawah’s voice.

“Oh please, I know how to talk to techies. I will get it under control and as soon as you introduce me to her, I will be at the forefront.”

Darren snorted again.

“You don’t get it, do you? We don’t  fucking need to introduce you to her. She is here. Right now. Listening. And she was not amused by your attitude. Good luck making overcoming that!”

The devastated screech coming from the com was music in my ears. Not that I fully understood why this fixer thought it was so important. After all, I conducted my business almost exclusively from the Abyss anyway, and rare is the fixer that walks there.

“Now, I don’t think it will help you significantly, but it might prevent her from visiting your computer system if you simply ask your fucking clients what they want.

Or, just an idea, we bypass you and ask them directly. What do you think?”

The blubbering from the com was barely identifiable as an agreement, but shortly after that, the call ended.

Unfortunately, directly after that, they all directed their attention to me, without saying a word for a few long seconds. I squirmed uncomfortably in my chair.

“Uh, what?”

Christine sighed and shook her head.

“I think we are all wondering why you are that important. I mean, don’t get me wrong, you are a terrific tech, and it seems quite a good Jack, but that enthusiasm?”

I shrugged.

“Sorry, but I have no idea where that comes from. Yes, I am a good tech, and my boards, my modules, my utilities, and my nanobot designs are pretty treasured. But I sell them almost exclusively over the darknet. I have a message board in the Abyss where anybody who wants something can ask. I’ve never used a fixer for that.

Heck, I am a broker, the Abyss-equivalent of a fixer myself. Why should I pay somebody for doing my job?”

Kate leaned back in her chair, giving her patented four-armed shrug.

“He is a fixer. They usually think they can control anything and everything. There are some good ones, but they are wide and far in between.”

Darren cleared his throat.

“Not that this is not interesting, but can we get back to the original topic? What do we do about Yang? I think we all agree that the world is a better place without him in it.”

Natalie shrugged and answered him: “Yeah, it would be, but how? If we hit him in Manton street the whores there will pay the price. Away from there, and we will have to tangle with PEES, and that could be bad with a capital b. And you better don’t even think about hitting him at work. We don’t have the firepower to do that.”

Mark rubbed his chin before he looked at me.

“Can you cut the PEES and biomon out? That would make it possible.”

I shook my head. “It is possible but extremely unlikely. PEES has an incredible redundancy. We could jam the connection in Manton, and I could try to overwhelm the matrix there, but… no, it is unlikely to work.”

“And what about getting us more information about Yang? Corps usually don’t use any managers, even mid-level ones for bait. Something’s fishy around this guy.” Darren’s question hit me unprepared.

I thought for a moment. That would mean attacking Sandoval directly, probably their headquarters, as it was probably there that the decision had been made. A much more daunting task than sneaking into a tertiary facility. And I would need to get information about what cyber-security Sandoval had there.

“Don’t plan with it. I can look into it, but I can’t promise anything yet. With enough time, no problem, I’ll get the access. But until tomorrow? Depending on the security that might be impossible. Then there is the factor of stealth.

It took so long today with a tertiary node from Shieldwall because tomorrow, next week, or next year, Shieldwall will not learn about it. I triggered no alerts, left no traces, nothing. Ghosting through anything Sandoval had in their headquarters will be almost impossible. And it is impossible on short notice.”

“Yeah, that’s what I expected. Look into it anyway. It might not be for tomorrow if the hookers are smart enough, but I think we will need it eventually.”

“Ok, I’ll try my best.”

With that, I stood up and got back to Glory. And back into the fray. Naturally, the first thing I did was look up known information about Sandoval in the Abyss. Not much, sadly, but I learned that they had contracted Dalgon for their cyber-security.

I could work with that, sure. Unlike nearly all other hackers, I had access to Dalgon’s source codes. But even with that their setups were hard to break through.

The next step was looking into the people who had access to the information. To do that, I set Warden to sent spiders through the dark web, finding any information about Sandoval execs, to find any exploitable weakness.

Anything at all. Of course, that would take time. In all likelihood significantly longer than the not quite a full day that I had under the original planning. But I had to try it anyway.

Finally, I made my way to Sandoval HQ in Philadelphia. It had moved there after DC had been glassed in the night of the falling stars, and stayed there even when the Capital had been rebuilt.

The matrix of Philly was quite a bit different from NY or Seattle. It displayed the historical angle, the weight of the centuries that this city had. Where NY was glittering and bright skyscrapers clad in neon lights, and Seattle resembled more the brutalistic massive architecture that had been the style of Panacea with all its bombast, here I found wood and brick buildings, illuminated by gas lights and torches, cobblestone roads, and all in all a rustic feeling, heavy with suffocating history.

Sandoval HQ looked like a 17^th-century warehouse from the outside. As soon as I entered the public areas though it was chock full of factitious hypermodernity. Chromed stainless steel, mirrored glass walls, holographic displays showing all the accomplishments of Sandoval, the typical we-love-us showcase of a B-class corp desperately trying to project the image of being important.

The very first thing I did, again, was testing the defenses. The reaction to my sniffers was fast, brutal and, if I were not used to it and expecting it, absolutely frightening. As it was, it was, well, expected, and so I was not impacted when some gray ICE fried my poor sniffers within microseconds.

I had released them through a bot-zombie and had designed them in a way that they looked like the typical Joker having his automated scripts explore the matrix for vulnerabilities.

Whenever one of those ran headlong into a Dalong-system, they often had to reinstall their system, because believe it or not, the big three were as fed up with these clowns as the rest of us were, but that was mostly it.

And there were dozens of them in every sub-matrix, always running their scripts poking and prodding.

Heck, the only reason no Abyss-dweller had gone on a rampage through their systems yet was that their idiocy was such a good cover for our own probes.

And it gave me enough to identify the first-level firewall that Sandoval had bought. The Dalgon Testudo system was most certainly not the best that Dalgon had to offer.

What it was though was a cheap and relatively effective firewall that was designed specifically in a way so that it could slot in into nearly every other Dalgon security suite. In other words, learning about the Testudo helped me exactly bubkis.

Not that I did not suspect that beforehand. I had to try anyway, and who knows, sometimes you get lucky.

Also, the sniffers showed me where to find the open ports in this very first firewall. Unfortunately, until I, and the others I guess, decided on a final strategy, that was where I had to stop for now.

Yes, it would be relatively easy to break deeper into Sandoval, but no automated script would break through a Testudo, and that would make any attempt by me much more obvious.

I could be lucky and successfully sneak through without triggering anything, and in all honesty, I was good enough that this approach was a distinct option, but it was a risk that I would not tempt without talking about the strategy.

Of course, if it was irrelevant what tracks I left behind, I could go on a smash-and-grab. An all-out assault on a B-class would be obvious, obviously, and it would probably lead to several burned-out computers, but it would be well within my possibilities.

Of course, the next day, everybody and their dog would know about it. Heck, if I had enough time… no, I would not use Hermes on something that insignificant. Yes, I could use the same method I used to infiltrate the banks, but that would pose an unacceptable risk for my safety. Heck, the only reason why I had not yet completely dismantled Hermes by now was that I might use it against Panacea in the future if I found no other attack angle.

That left me with a hand full of options for Sandoval, and none of them anything that might be quick.

The best, safest method would be social engineering, but that was also the slowest.

The rest would depend on what the others wanted to do.

And so I left Sandoval and rustic and the rustic Philadelphia matrix and got back into NYC.

Without expecting any results yet, I checked what Warden had unearthed.

And got a surprise.

Evidently, all managers and execs of Sandoval included one Christopher Yang. And Warden found his name mentioned in the dark web.

It might be another Christopher Yang of Sandoval, but that was, in one word, unlikely. Even more interesting was that it was a discussion between two drug dealers.

One of them boasted to his rival that he had landed a whale, a Sandoval exec as a steady customer. He did not go deeper into any details, but it was a nice lead.

It took me no time to find Mr. Raylon Boone’s computer. I quickly realized that he deactivated the onboard LAN of it, not realizing that that would not cut it off from the matrix without deactivating the hidden WiFi as well.

Idiot, did he really think that the big corps would be so accomodating and make that easy? The only reliable way was to essentially build your own computer.

Oh sure, a good tech could cut off any computer from the net. It took work, and you had to physically modify some of the components, and usually, it was just not worth it.

Just get a goddang design from the dark web and print it yourself or have a shop with an industrial fabber print it.

As it was, it was extremely easy to ‘infiltrate’ this computer, as Mr. Boone obviously thought that cutting it off from the net was security enough.

Heck, the thing was not even shut down, not that many were in these days. After all, electricity was too cheap to meter, so why bother?

In this case, I quickly got the encrypted customer database from Mr. Boone. Well, I got all his databases, including the customer one, but who cares about the rest? Suppliers, Competition, Debtors, Superiors? Nothing of that was my problem. Territory? Am I the DEA?

And par for the course, his encryption was garbage as well. It took Warden all of five minutes to decrypt it.

Now, what to do with this information? I saw that he was addicted to something called ‘blue wonder’, whatever that is, and his doses had become bigger over the last few months as it seemed.

Much bigger.

I took the time to look up this blue wonder. It was a combination of Sildenafil, Dextroamphetamine, Oxandrolone, and Methylphenidate.

I mentally scratched my head. Why the heck would somebody do that to his body? I mean, yeah Sildenafil, Dextroamphetamine, and Methylphenidate had the effect of increasing the libido and the resulting performance, and Oxandrolone helped build the stamina for it, but please, the cocktail was, in my barely educated opinion just a way to get people addicted to something.

It had also the side effect of making the users irritable, highly aggressive, and psychotic.

Still puzzled, I surfaced and found that Darren had at some point followed me to my dive-room.

He sat in a chair, quietly looking at a tablet. Before I could say anything, he looked up and directly at me.

“Back so soon? I would have guessed that it takes longer to get into Sandoval HQ than this shitty Shieldwall barracks.”

“Uh, yeah. It does. It does so much that I decided that the risk is too high without talking to you all about it. I just looked into it.”

“Ah, ok. And what is your opinion?”

“Well, if we need it until tomorrow afternoon, it will be hard, loud, and obvious. I can obliterate the defenses and do a smash-and-grab. It is not something that I would do lightly though.

If we have more time, I have other options. The best option would be getting access from one of the exects. Social engineering. But I have no idea how long that will take.

Sneaking through the defenses will take a few days at least, and I can’t promise that I don’t leave traces. Not to me, and us, but it might be apparent that somebody looked Yang up.”

He nodded.

“Yeah, thought something like that. The problem is really that it has to happen soon. Not enough run-up to make good preparations.”

I stretched for a bit.

“Well, one thing I found out is that Yang is a junkie.”

Darren's eyes narrowed, and his mouth stretched out into a line, for a short moment before he answered.

“A junkie? Seriously? That is… well, that could be the opening we need. How did you find out?”

I shrugged.

“His dealer bragged in the dark web that he landed a whale. It was easy to follow from there.”

“Hm, can you find out what he takes?”

“Already done. He takes increasingly high doses of blue wonder.”

He frowned.

“Blue wonder? I have heard the name, but I have no idea what it does.”

“It is Sildenafil, Dextroamphetamine, Oxyandrolone, and Methylphenidate.”

He chuckled.

“Yeah, that tells me everything.”

“Sildenafil is as far as I know still better known as Viagra, Dextroamphetamine is, well, an Amphetamine, known for being an aphrodisiac among other things, Oxandrolone is an anabolic steroid and Methylphenidate is I think better known as Ritalin. Also a euphoric and it is used to get better control.

Together they should make Yang horny, aggressive, paranoid, and psychotic.”

He slowly scratched his chin.

“Hm, any of those deadly?”

“Oxandrolone not so much. The Sildenafil can cause cardiac arrest or a stroke, but I don’t know at what doses. Methylphenidate is unlikely to kill him. The Dextroamphetamine… yeah, that could kill him. It probably will kill him if you guys don’t get him beforehand. From the side-effects of those others, I would think the Sildenafil does increase the risk substantially.”

He nodded again.

“So, an overdose, with the biomon shut-off, and the guards drunk, what would happen?”

“A cardiac arrest, a stroke, brain hemorrhage, and circulatory collapse. If he gets help fast enough, he might survive, but it is unlikely that he will be living without assistance, much less function or work.

But, how will you get the guards drunk and him taking an overdose?”

He gave me a lopsided grin.

“Oh, I have my ways. No, I think you gave us the solution to get it done without getting the hookers killed. The guards will be in the shitter, but corp thugs, who cares. It might be hard on his dealer, but again, no humans are involved. So yes, I think I have the beginning of a plan.

One question, can you cut off the bio-mons of the guards and make it look like a glitch or a fuck-up from one of their techs?”

“Sure. I just launch a routine software audit in the system which will find irregularities and messes up. Crashes the monitoring system when they leave, and it should be a couple of hours before they notice it. Why?”

“I’ll have to have it germinate for a bit. I’ll tell you later when I have the full plan. But in general, the later Shieldwall learns about Yang’s misfortune, the better.”

With that, he stood up, and left the room, leaving me a bit puzzled.