Chapter 1: A Golden Opportunity.
The rain beat down hard, cascading from the dark gray skies above. Often colliding and ricocheting off the colossal metal skyscrapers, that sought to pierce the dark heavens themselves. I quickened my steps, the rain continuing to fall, my gaze fixed upon the tacky sign ahead of me. The buzzing neon lights reading 'Yamoto's Bar' in both English and Japanese characters. I pushed through the hordes of people that were slowly shuffling amongst the dirty street. Herding themselves like cattle, their minds and bodies solely focused on their destinations.
Brushing them aside, I sought the shelter of the restaurant, or bar, or whatever the hell it was. So long as it was dry, that would be enough for me. There was a dull droning noise from above and looking up, I spied a huge blimp suspended amongst the dark skies,weightlessly gliding high above me. The large LCD panels on the sides were blaring out a colorful advertisement, greatly contrasting the gray skyline. Slipping under the cover of the bar, I made my way inside Yamoto's. Droplets of moisture clung to my silvery gray hair, and with a quick ruffling I managed to get most of it out. Glancing around the small walk-in restaurant, I realized that it was a sushi bar, of all places.
'Guess that explains the Japanese sign' I thought, taking the nearest available seat near me and resting my arms on the white counter top. I watched the staff run this way and that as they prepared their various dishes to be place on a small conveyer belt, that slowly crawled past me.
I huddled in on myself, my gaze flicking to the people sitting around me. None of them looked particularly interested in my sudden arrival, which was a good thing. The less people who took notice of me, the easier my existence was. I watched small white plates adorned with tarted up seafood and rice crawl past on the moving belt.
'What am I even doing here?' I thought to myself.
Reaching into my hooded jacket, I felt my fingers brush past the cool metal of the pistol I had snugly hidden inside one of it's many pockets. Reaching in further, I grabbed what I was searching for. Taking out my phone I began scouring through my messages, until I found the one I was searching for. It appeared on the display:
'I heard you're good at what you do and I've got a small proposition for you, with great pay to match... Meet me at Yamoto's Bar, 5:00pm tomorrow. I'll be waiting for you. Come alone.
-Z'
I read it again and again, pondering on who this 'Z' could be. Checking the time, I saw that it was nearing five o'clock. Unease stirred in my gut. The whole thing smelled like a set up, I'm not an idiot when it came to cloak and dagger meetings... and the risks they usually involved. I made my fair share of slip-ups in this business and I've learned from them. A lot of people were looking for guys like me. The kind of people who could make you disappear and no one would ask questions as to why. So, you could say I was... skeptical, when I first got the message.
Yet... here I was.
I don't know whether it was greed or boredom that brought me here. Maybe it was a little of both... The mere thought of making money was enough to put a guy on edge and I was no different. However as a general rule of thumb, no money was acquired without risk. Not in my line of work anyway. To people like me, everything was a risk assessment. Weighing up the danger and the potential profit to see whether any kind of 'proposition' was actually worth the effort.
I glanced around the bar once again and out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a young man dressed in a course woolen vest. He stood before making his way over to me. He had soft green eyes and a shaggy brown mop upon his head. As he approached me I slipped my phone back into my jacket before resting my hand on the gun I still had hidden away... just a precaution. The man slowly sat down next to me, seemingly oblivious to my existence. He reached over and lifted a couple of plates from the conveyer belt in front of us. He set the plates out before him before reaching over to pull two plastic chopsticks from a nearby dispenser.
I watched him for a little longer, wondering if he was the one who had set up this meeting. My eyes traced up and down his body, searching for any signs of hidden weaponry. As far as I could tell, he wasn't carrying.
"You know, there are places like this all over LA, dozens of 'em. But do you want to know why I come to this place above all others?"
The brown haired man asked with a thin smile.
The question caught me off guard.
I slowly turned to face him, deciding to keep silent.
The man took the hint and quickly grabbed a small white bottle that was sitting on the counter top, before pouring it's contents into a plastic shot glass. He raised it up in a way as if to make a toast before a large stupid grin spread across is face.
"It has the best darn Sake this side of LA!" He exclaimed before downing the liquid in one quick gulp.
The man shivered slightly as he slammed the cup back onto the white counter so hard that I thought it might break. The robust alcoholic beverage seemed to knock the breath right out of him. He panted as a large toothy smile appeared. It was then I noticed that one of the man's upper teeth was absent, replaced by a dark gap, I assumed it had been lost in the midst of a wild drunken misadventure of some sort.
"Name's Zheren" he said, extending a grubby linen wrapped hand out to me, expecting a handshake.
I stared at his hand for a moment, not particularly keen on swapping skin cells with this dirty drunkard. However despite my better judgment- and acute sense of smell- I raised my hand to meet his.
"Lawrence" I replied flatly, embracing his hand with a firm handshake.
"Lawrence huh?" Zheren mused, before tightening his grip on my right hand and yanking my arm towards him, my entire body lurched to the right as he pulled.
Startled by the man's sudden actions, I instinctively went for my gun. But before I could draw the compact pistol, Zheren had pushed up my jacket's sleeve, leaving my skin exposed for all to see. The man's eyes lit up with excitement, as he eyed the black circuit board like markings that ran down my forearm.
He leaned in close to me, too close for my liking, with a thin smile on his lips.
"So you really are him... the infamous Data Miner Kraft Lawrence..." Zheren chuckled softly, the stench of his breath reeking of alcohol.
"To be honest, I wasn't sure whether you would come. You seem to be the cautious type." He mused, glancing at my gun for only the briefest of moments.
I wrenched my arm out of the man's grasp, an angry scowl upon my face.
'Who the hell is this guy?' I thought, beginning to cover the exposed circuit markings by rolling down my jacket's sleeve.
"How do you know me? More importantly, what do want?" I protested, trying to keep my voice as hushed as possible.
Zheren gave a crooked smile, "Right to the point, huh... alright, I'll pitch it to you straight. Basically I'm in need of someone like you. I've heard about what you can do and it'll be useful in a little escapade I've got planned." He said, glancing at my right arm before carefully pouring out two more shots of sake.
"Lemme ask you something Lawrence, how much do you know about Wheaten Laboratories?" He asked, sliding the plastic shot cup filled with the clear liquid over to me.
"Wheaten?" I repeated softly as I took the small shot glass that was being offered.
"That's the research facility located downtown, they're adverse in genetic engineering, right?"
Zheren nodded as he picked up a small rice ball from one of the plates he had gotten earlier and eagerly popped it in his mouth.
"That's right." He said through a mouthful of rice before swallowing.
"Recently, Wheaten's funding has been jacked up tenfold. So now they're making all kinds of upgrades to their facilities, including upping their security network."
He reached into one of his pockets and pulled out a small hand-held PC. With a few taps upon the screen, a small document appeared.
"Here, take a look." He said passing the compact tablet over to me.
I glanced over the document that was displayed upon the screen and just from the first scan, I could tell it was an order invoice for Wheaten Laboratories. I began scrolling through the listings of standard equipment, and nothing seemed terribly out of the ordinary. But then around about a quarter of a page down, I saw something that was the exact opposite of ordinary.
'One hundred, fifty boxes of live ammunition? Thirteen Halifax Sentry Turrets and thirty Anti-Personnel Mech Drones?! What!? This is a research facility in the middle of downtown LA, not a god darn military instillation! Why the hell would they need this level of security?' I exclaimed in my head.
My surprise must have shown, as Zheren picked up on it.
"So... you see it?" he asked, already knowing the answer.
"I got a hold of that invoice as it was being sent out through the WAN. It took a bit of doing, but I managed to copy it." He said with an essence of pride.
'He copied and reconstructed the data packets as they were sent through the wide area network, not bad... not bad at all...' I remarked in my head before regaining my composure and getting on with the matter at hand.
"Where are you heading with this? What happened to 'giving it to me straight'?" I snarked, in a faux mocking tone.
"Did you look at their serial numbers?" Zheren asked before sticking a piece of seaweed wrapped fish in his mouth.
I had another look at the tablet's display, looking for the MSN of the items on the invoice, primarily that of the Turrets and Mech Drones. The serial number for both read: 'X100-250512354' and 'X100-524521698.' Now, I don't normally keep myself up to date on all the latest software and hardware releases, especially if it was military grade product.
Even though it was a high end commodity and greatly sought after on the black market, it was hardly worth the risk. And I'm talking about the kind of risk with thirty-odd highly trained and heavily armed guards with a shoot-to-kill mentality.
Because of that, I wasn't the type of person to go around trying to 'acquire' military grade software, I didn't have a death wish.
Despite this, I didn't recognize the model number 'X100'.
"X100? I've never heard that one before." I muttered, hoping that Zheren would fill me in.
Zheren smiled again, "Yeah, I'm not surprised. The X100 line is the new brand of defensive innovations from Sycorax Industries. And we're talking new, like not even in mass production yet. Only the best security firms would have access to this stuff and even then it'd be hard to get. The X100 line is supposedly going to be far greater than anything produced before it."
I stared at him incredulously.
"So let me get this straight... you're planning on getting into Wheaten Laboratories to get your hands on this rare, and dare I say cumbersome military tech?" I grumbled flatly.
Forget what I said about this guy being 'not bad', he was a moron if he thought I'd ever get caught up in a dumb-ass scheme like this.
Zheren simply leaned in close to me with a cocky smirk on his face,
"It's not just the hardware that's better..." he said.
I shot him a smile that portrayed both realization and amusement.
"You're after the software." I said, piecing together why he wanted me on board.
Zheren nodded with a grin, "You got it. Sycorax totally revamped their security suite on their hardware, we're talking a full-blown OS overhaul here! Real time tactical analysis, self replicating combat sub routines and a fully integrated self learning system! Imagine if we could get our hands on the software, If we cracked, copied and sold it, we could make a killing!" Despite Zheren muttering softly, trying to play it low key as possible, I could hear the pure excitement and anticipation in his voice.
I brought my hand up to my chin, feeling my unshaven stubble as I pondered Zheren's proposition, my brow furrowing. The potential profit that could be made would be staggering. We could be talking millions if we found a good buyer for it, which wouldn't be too hard considering the complexity of this new software suite.
Zheren seemed to know quite a bit about it, and If we took into account that this software wasn't even available to the best security firms, that would make the price soar even higher. Also Sycorax and Wheaten were privately owned, meaning that we wouldn't be crossing with any of the corporate overlords of Pegasus Horizons. We might even be able to cut a deal with some of the smaller company rivals of Sycorax and avoid the Black Market entirely.
However, despite the speculation of money that could be made, there was still the matter of risk in acquiring it.
"So... whataya say? Do you want in on this?" Zheren asked with his chipped smile, extending his hand forward as if he were making a business deal.
I rose my hands up to my head in protest. "Hang on a second, how are you even planning on getting this software anyway?"
Zheren's face and hand fell, "I... well... I've got a plan, but I'm not at liberty to discuss it with you. Y-you understand right? I can fill you in if you join up with us, but I can't risk jeopardizing ourselves."
I rose my hand up to my chin in thought, hardly convinced by the solidity of Zheren's little scheme. There was so much I didn't know and walking into a situation without knowing all the details, is the kind of thing that gets you killed. Still if Zheren was right about this new software suite, it could turn out very profitable. And I hated to admit it, but I hadn't made any decent money in a while. It could be a turn around for me, maybe it'd be enough for me to retire...
"So do we have an agreement?" Zheren asked nervously, stirring me from my thoughts.
"Just tell me this Zheren... this plan of yours. How solid is it?" I asked, my gaze hardening.
"I can tell you that it's a good plan. But... there's no such thing as a foolproof plan, right?" Zheren chuckled uneasily.
I kept silent as I stroked my chin in thought for a moment longer.
"Alright..." I said lowering my hand and extending it towards him, smiling.
"You can count me in."
Zheren beamed as he quickly met his hands with mine, entangling it in a wild hand shake.
"Really?! Oh God, you had me holding my breath there for a moment." he exclaimed in relief.
"So what happens now?" I asked and Zheren broke his firm handshake and hastily reached into his pocket once more and removed a small black circular object.
He placed it on the counter and slid it across towards me.
"What's this?" I asked picking up the flat object and examining it.
Zheren grinned again, "Consider it as something to wet your appetite, as well erase anymore doubts you might have..." He said with a wink.
I stared at the object for a moment longer and realized it was a compact credit disc, valued at around seven thousand credits. All of said credits were digitaly stored upon the small black disc and could be accessed at any time.
'Where the hell did he get this money from? He didn't appear to be particularly wealthy...' I thought.
I slipped the small disc into the palm of my hand and wrapped my fingers around it.
"Seven thousand credits is one hell of a preliminary investment," I stated.
Zheren shrugged, "Just a way to show you that we're playing to win, it'll be one hell of a catch if we pull it off!" He chuckled as he picked up his lonely shot glass. The clear liquid swirled around it as he rose it up towards me.
"I'm looking forward to working with you... Kraft Lawrence." He grinned, delight ringing in his tone.
I gave a small reserved smile myself, as I picked up my own shot glass Zheren had poured me earlier. I rose the glass up to collide with Zheren's. The two glasses made a satisfying clacking noise as the plastic collided.
And in almost perfect synchronization, we both drank from the cheap shot glasses.
