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Dav stretched his legs as he lay across the seat of the truck. They still twinged a bit, although the jagged scars running across his thighs had almost completely faded. He reached under the dash and opened up the access panel for the computer. As he'd expected, it bore no clues to the intrusion. Breaking into the truck to get at it wouldn't have been a problem either. Since both windows were nothing more than a ragged holes, the lock was within easy reach.

As he pushed himself upright, his hand brushed something out of sight under the seat, and when he pulled it out, he spent a couple of seconds staring dumbly at his datapad. He'd assumed that it'd been lost somewhere between the warehouse and the hospital. A grin spread across his face. Perhaps he could show that going to the lab hadn't been a complete fiasco after all.

A cautionary instinct slowed him as he climbed over the rail from the lower level. "Cherry, dump everything on here into quarantine, and once it's been cleaned, give me an analysis of the contents." He might be crossing the line between caution and paranoia, but after all that he'd been though he figured that he could afford a little of that. It was certainly plausible that his datapad hadn't been so conveniently overlooked after all.

Cherry churned over the data for a few seconds. 'It's cleaner than my butt fresh outta the bath, Boss,' Cherry printed, and then flashed an image of the buxom brunette clad only in a towel. 'It's got all your previous data, pictures from the lab, the preliminary analysis from the air catcher, and nothing else that shouldn't be there.'

"Give me the catcher's preliminary results. And put on some clothes before you catch cold."

Cherry reappeared on the screen wearing a parka, her eyes the only thing visible beneath the hood. 'It got four hits over all. Two males, two females. One of those is definitely you.' A rather unflattering picture that she must've taken while he was sleeping appeared on the screen. 'Or your evil twin.' The picture sprouted crayoned on red horns and a goatee. 'Hit #2: unknown male. Hit #3: unknown female. Hit #4: Unusually similar to hit #3. Possible error. Sample may have been damaged, or possibly a close relation.'

Dav seated himself in front of the terminal. "I'm going to get back in touch with Twae. I think that she might be interested in this, and I might as well take as much advantage as I can while her watchdog is away. Keep going over the data from the lab, but if you find anything that needs my attention, set it aside until I'm done with Twae. If she's only going to give information to me in dribbles, I can return the favor."

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Twae was brought out of her reverie amongst the flora by the insistent alert ping for an incoming message. She quickly glanced towards Nemo's door. If he'd been awake, he would've been out of his room to answer it already. She really hated the way that he screened all of her calls, but there was usually nothing she could do about it.

"You have something?" she asked eagerly when she saw Dav on the other end of the line.

"Maybe. Take a look at this, and tell me if you can fill in any of the blanks."

Twae blinked as the defaced picture of Daveren appeared on her screen, then shrugged and moved on to the others. It only took a moment to compare the information to both her and Nemo's profile, and to her disappointment, they were both a perfect match, leaving just the final hit unaccounted for. "Maybe... it's my mother?" she suggested hopefully.

Dav shook his head. "Too close a match for that, or even a sister, unless you had a mostly identical twin tucked into the tube with you. I'd say that the catcher picked up two hits on you, and one of them was just a bad read."

"So no trace of my father?"

"None that I came across. I'll try going back to the lab once things have cooled off. It might have survived, but..." He trailed off with a resigned shrug. "I'll include all of this with the data dump. Do me a favor and don't mention anything that I've told you to Nemo."

"Any reason?" Twae asked, although she wasn't about to argue with him about it. Even under the best of circumstances, she wouldn't be particularly eager to inform Nemo that she'd been going behind his back.

"Just a hunch," Dav replied, and signed off.

Twae stared at the screen for another couple of seconds after he broke the connection. She wondered idly if perhaps she just happened to have some sort of aura around her that inspired paranoia in others.

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For some reason the flickering sign above the entrance annoyed Dav more than usual as he walked under it. Dripping condensation from somewhere lost up above in the murk left puddles scattered around the entrance. He could read 'Raven's Nest' in backward neon at his feet. He stomped on the puddle as he walked into to the bar. It bore that name in homage and imitation of the network that had been bound the Ravens together, back in the days when it had all meant something more. You could find one in almost any large city, and it served as both a focal point for Core pilots, as well as a watering hole for those drawn to the perceived mystique of mercenary life. To Dav, it served as a final reminder of how far things had fallen, the cap to a long series of blows. It served its purpose well enough, but did so without any sort of dignity. Through the wires of the old Raven's Nest, business was conducted in a manner short and to the point. Haggling had the sterile disconnection of a wire only transaction. Even at the worst times, at least the clients had never seen Ravens get sloppy drunk and clamber over each other at the hint of a contract. What garbage there was, had been safely out of sight under the rug.

There was a large cluster of people at the bar, with someone talking loudly at its center. Dav listened for a moment and then continued on, rolling his eyes. From the sound of it, Dirk was well over his loss in the arena.

Dav kept his head down to avoid notice, heading over to one of the terminals underneath a segmented screen that ran the length of most of one wall of the bar. Most of them were in use, showing a myriad of Cores, arenas, and battles. The arena records were one of the few sources of pride for the new Ravens. All of the records dating back to the first days of the Arena had been painstakingly reconstructed from memory and data fragments, and all formal arena battles were fully recorded and documented. A flash of conceit made him call up his battle with DnD. Watching the other Core's head go sailing through the air made him smile, just a little. He returned to business, searching through the archives for a particular record, and he was not surprised when all that he found was a date, title, and two lines of text.

Honorary Arena Battle

Hustler – 1 and Nineball VS Ten Yen Wonder and The Lady Fey

Winner: ?

There were no videos, pictures, or a location mentioned. The only reason there was even an entry a all was because shortly after their disappearance, an anonymous message alerted the Ravens that Hustler – 1 and the Ten-Yen Wonder had finally had their showdown, although the final outcome was unknown.

Although he'd been held in a much higher regard at the end, Ten-Yen had been something of a joke when he'd joined the Ravens. He'd made it clear that his only reason for becoming a Raven was to take down Nineball, a vow that no one had taken seriously, especially considering the Core he'd fielded at his entrance test. A Raven of Asiatic lineage had commented that the whole thing looked like it cost about ten-yen. He'd worn the ridicule as a badge, and he'd shown them all just how far 'ten-yen' could go, tearing through the contract lists with an unheard of 100% success rate, and steadily clawing his way up through the Arena rankings. To anyone who'd actually crossed his path, it was apparent that his obsession to take down the number one Raven was not so farfetched after all.

But then Ten Yen took it a step too far. In those days, you took your contracts through Lana Nielson. Period. You were allowed one screw up. Ten Yen got his freebie, but then got a tip off that Nineball was involved in an attack on Progtech's central research facility. The corporation sent out an emergency request for defenders, but the Nest had refused to sanction the contract; Ten-Yen couldn't resist the opportunity to go straight after Hustler – 1, and had taken the contract anyway.

His actions cost him his Raven membership. It almost got him censured from the Arena. Although the Arena had few written rules, there were certain codes of conduct that Ravens were expected to honor. When he and Nineball met that day, they disregarded every one of them. Brutality did not begin to describe their battle: they all but leveled Progtech's primary research facility, and although both Cores practically ripped each other to pieces, Ten-Yen was the one who came out on top, but even after Nineball was completely disabled, Ten-Yen kept pouring firing onto the Core. The only thing that saved him from actual prosecution was the fact that when the cockpit was pried out of the shredded wreck and cracked open, not only was Hustler – 1 not inside, but barely three days later he back in action and fielding a brand new Nineball.

That did nothing to shield Ten-Yen from Lana's wrath though. Almost before the battle had finished, there was a message in his inbox, informing him of his termination as a Raven. Despite the derision, he'd been genuinely liked by most and Ten-Yen's expulsion shocked the other Ravens. His drive and tenacity had earned him not just the grudging respect of his fellow mercenaries, but from the Corporations as well. The fact that Lana's severance message ended with 'You'll die soon enough," didn't sit well with many people either. Ravens had been turned out in the past, for much more spectacularly repellent infractions than his, but even the worst of them hadn't been subjected to such unbridled rancor. Several jockeys risked Lana's wrath by trying to get him to try and appeal his expulsion, but Ten- Yen completely turned his back on the Ravens, negotiating a permanent contract with Progtech.

Hustler-1 was still actively campaigning against the corporation and the two clashed on several further occasions, with escalating violence, but then they both just disappeared. The last record of Ten-Yen had his Core accessing a lift near Old Petersburg, and then disappearing aboveground. After his last fight with Ten-Yen, no one could even find a trace of Nineball. If it hadn't been for that anonymous message, no one would have had any idea that they'd killed each other in a final showdown.

Dav backtracked through some of Ten Yen's more notable arena battles. If he hadn't known otherwise, he would've thought this a different pilot completely than the one who'd fought Nineball. His fighting style was precise, almost to the point of hesitancy. Rarely did he waste a movement, or even a bullet. Watching him fight was almost like watching a choreographed routine. Although his precision was probably one of the reasons that he did so well on contracts, it sometimes worked against him in the Arena, especially against opponents who liked to make themselves the eye of a flamboyant bullet storm. He might've made it to the top of the lists eventually, but Dav had trouble faulting him for taking the opportunity to bypass them completely and go straight for Nineball.

Nineball's arena records were popular viewing, and Dav doubted there was any extra risk in taking a look at them. If everyone who did so were killed, the corpses would've been piled three-deep out the door. As Ten-Yen had epitomized cool efficiency, Nineball'd been the living avatar of sheer lethality. Few Ravens had ever approached the number of fatalities he'd inflicted in the Arena, and unlike some jockeys, he achieved that height by being bloodthirsty, just ruthless. He would honor a surrender, if the other jockey lived long enough to cry 'uncle.' When Nineball had joined the Arena, it'd taken almost a year for the lists to recoup their numbers from before he tore his way to the top.

Whatever the reasons behind it, Ten-Yen had never revealed the motivations for his vendetta, and Huster-1 had never even directly acknowledged the enmity, except for that final challenge. It wasn't hard to speculate what kind of bad blood might've arisen between them; one of those near countless jockeys that Nineball had torqued could've been Ten-Yen's father, brother, or even sister, or mother. None of that rang quite right to Dav though. Blood feuds between Ravens weren't all that uncommon, but they tended to be anything but quiet. As Chaevers had used to say, "People aren't satisfied with these things until someone declares, 'My Name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die."

Dav got a drink from the autotender and then changed directories from the arena records to the pilot profiles. It would've made things easier if they'd included a biography, or more than the bare minimum of personal information, but it'd long been considered bad for the mystique to list facts like the name of the jockey's dog, or his top ten 3vee shows. Unless it occurred during the course of a contract or arena duel, mention or details of death weren't even included. After a certain amount of time, jockeys were simply listed as having gone 'inactive.'

Calling up the profile for Ten-Yen, Dav saw that it included a picture, and he thought that it told a lot about the man. It caught him glancing away from the camera, his face young but already becoming worn. His hair was blond and was already beginning to creep back from his forehead. He had it pulled back in a ponytail that lent his appearance a look of careful composure. As of the date he'd been listed as 'inactive' he'd been barely twenty-six. His real name wasn't listed, but going by handle alone had been standard back then. Lana had somehow always known how to get in touch with a jockey, so real names had been unnecessary. Too, the cores often were more recognizable than the pilots, which was why people more often spoke of Nineball, rather than Hustler-1.

For the three pilots that Twae had previously 'tracted, one was dead, one was 'inactive' and Dav doubted that it'd be long before the third reached that point too. Dav called up the profile for Stabemall, the pilot of XC- Cutioner 666, who had the 'Dead' tag at the top of his profile. Dav was glad that it didn't include the pictures. The moron had stumbled across a nest of proto units while on a topside mission, and in the middle of things had gotten _out_ of his Core. He'd ceased to exist as a corporeal entity about three seconds later. Whoever had brought that winner to Twae's attention deserved to have their genitals revoked.

He quickly moved onto the profile for the next pilot, which took less than a minute to read, and then to the last, which took even less time than the previous one. The only notable thing that Dav could find about them was how completely mediocre they'd benn. Looking at all three of them together made Dav wonder just what Twae had been thinking when she'd hired them, because it sure couldn't have been straight. Whatever guiding hand had led her when she'd picked those winners, he hoped it'd been occupied elsewhere when decided on him.

He backed out of the profile directory but then left the parser idle as he stopped to think. Each of the 'Raven's Nests' scattered across the world shared a common data network called 'the Tree.' It didn't look like he'd be able to get much else from the top-level directories, but if he started shaking the Tree too hard, he might not be happy with what fell out. It all depended on just how close an eye Nineball's shadowy 'enemies' were keeping on things.

He went up to the bar to get another drink and then took a booth nearby. What he really needed was more solid information on Nineball and Ten-Yen. If there was anything more substantive in the Tree, it'd be in out of the way places where intrusion could be easily noticed, and so far he hadn't dug up anything that someone with five minutes of free time couldn't duplicate. The data he wanted might not even exist. Ten-Yen had apparently been a Raven for most of his adult life, and Nineball had been a Raven for seemingly all of his, which at that time, almost by default made detailed information on the two of them scarce.

Dav stopped mid-drink, a trickle of liquid spilling down his chin as he held the glass at his lips. Going on contract with Progtech would've made Ten-Yen as good as an employee, and Dav doubted that the corporation would've put him on payroll under a handle. Lurking somewhere within Progtech's data structure was the information he wanted, he just had to figure out how to get at it.

Normally, he would've relied on Cherry for a job like that. Given enough time, she could probably copy the entire corporate database without anyone being the wiser, but that level of activity would be impossible until the spy eye pulled out. Hamstrung the way she was, he couldn't think of any way to get at Progtech's systems that wouldn't take years of tedious sifting.

He thought once more about that final message alerting the Ravens that Ten Yen and Nineball had finally had their showdown. It's data tracks had born a Progtech signature, but since it had arrived right in the middle of the chaos of Lana's disappearance, by the time anyone got to around to trying to trace it, the trail had completely degraded. Cherry might be able to unravel it, given enough time, and it was something that she wouldn't have to extend herself out system to-.

"Yu've gotta lotta nerve coming back here."

Dav glanced up at the interruption and saw Dirk leaning up against the bar. The crowd around him had dispersed, and he now stood alone, half a drink in his hand.

"Do I now?" Dav asked mildly.

Dirk approached him. Since their last meeting, the left side of his face seemed to have gotten stuck in a permanent sneer. "After that shit you pulled in Alamos, I didn't think you'd have the balls to show your face around here."

Dav tossed back the rest of his drink, then stepped past Dirk to the bar, signaling the tender for something stronger. He was disappointed to get only a shot glass, but he tossed it back anyway and waved for another. "You mean shot you till you fell over? I thought that was how it was supposed to go?"

Dirk's air of sneering superiority evaaorated. "Faak yu. If I took yu in a fair fight-."

"_You_ couldn't take me in a fair fight. You couldn't even take me in an unfair fight, using one of the most obscenely plus'd Core I've ever seen."

"Yu think you're so damn hot, jus cuz yu're still breathing, jus cuz-"

"I'm an old crow?" Dav tossed back, using the derogatory name that the newer Ravens frequently used for the old. "I think I'm so hot because I _am_ so hot. At least, compared to you. This old crow could smack you six ways from Sunday with his eyes closed."

"Yeah, that's wat yu say. I say that I _eat_ crow!"

Dav snickered, then wobbled a moment. He was starting to feel the effects of his drinks. "I'm sure you do."

Dirk scowled at him, realizing that he'd just been out spoken, although not quite sure how. "If I ever see that Pi of yours again, I'm going to make you eat it."

Dav raised an eyebrow. "Well, you'd better be careful, because sometimes you eat the Pi, and sometimes the Pi eats you."

Dirk stared at him in confusion for a few seconds. "Wha the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"It means that this conversation is over," Dav said, abandoning his drink at the bar and quickly stepping past Dirk, trying to lose himself in the crowd further in. There was only one possible outcome if that conversation had continued, and as much as Dav would've loved to tear some of that chrome off Dirk's face and shove it up his nose, the last thing that he needed right now was to be thrown out of the Nest, arrested, or some combination of the two.

Finding wisdom in another drink from an autotender, Dav decided that Dirk was probably a dirty fighter too.

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If she'd had fingernails, she would've chewed them ragged by now.

Cherry decided that she rather liked that image, storing the reference away for later recall and then returning to the matter at hand. So many of the things filling her processor time lately just didn't make sense. She would've topped the list with Dav's betrayal, but for her own piece of mind she'd been trying not to think of that, instead occupying her attention with the data that Dav had gotten from the lab, which was causing its own set of headaches. The ideal solution to all of her problems would've been to have Dav go back, take more pictures, and then take a fine-tooth comb to the lab, but the fire precluded that option, so she tried to make due with what she had.

Her problems started with the pictures of the press that'd concealed access to the lab. The tracks on the floor had been part of the opening mechanism, but from the wear patterns she could see in the pictures, it couldn't have been used much more than a couple times.

The activating catch also troubled her. Twae had provided no details on how to access it from the outside, and she'd been unable to identify any trigger. The press would slide back when someone tried to open that hatch from the inside just fine, but if you were outside it seemed like you were out of luck.

The results from the air catcher were also problematic. Much of the equipment down in the lab would've needed frequent monitoring, so Nineball or someone must've been in and out with some frequency, but the only people that it had gotten hits on were Nemo, Twae, and Dav. That could be chalked up to the vagaries of chance, but the fourth hit was also irritating her. It bore several markers that resembled Twae, and several more that didn't, and their arrangement made her want to think they came from a solid hit. However, if it really was the result of a bad sample then it could've just as convincingly stated that the fourth result belonged to a flying purple elephant. Without access to the catcher, she only had the preliminary results to go on and could not clarify them any further.

Just to give herself a break she'd started investigating the ownership records for the warehouse, but instead of being some gratifyingly tedious busywork, that had been where things had started to get really weird. The area had not actually been that badly damaged in the proto-unit attacks, but Chrome had been put under serious pressure by unidentified stockholders to abandon it. Before Chrome, the entire area had served as storage for a long dissolved bio-tech corporation that Cherry recognized as having manufacturer much of the equipment in the lab.

Despite his implied endorsement of their products, Nineball had apparently not been very fond of the corporation itself. He'd been the primary agent in a series of attacks on their research and testing facilities that had completely undercut its foundations. Its facilities crippled, and its researchers dead or running, the corporation had been unable to keep its rivals from carving it up, which was how Chrome ended up with the warehouses.

Cherry tried to delve deeper into the corporation's research history and Nineball's possible involvement, but as soon as she accessed the directories, she knew that something was amiss. All the files she wanted were right in front of her, fat, happy, and just waiting to be accessed. She might've gotten lucky, or this could be the juicy bait for a big, nasty, digital trap. A 'prickling' sensation arced across her thought lines, like through pure luck she had avoided stepping on the tiger's tail, and it was still unaware of her presence. Something was there, waiting for someone to go after the bait and fall right into its trap. She refused to oblige, and instead traced her steps back to a higher directory, digging further into the corporation's public history. It'd been on the cutting edge of genetic technology, and according to the PR copy, and had been poised on the brink of revolutionary breakthroughs in cellular manipulation and reproduction. Referring back to her previous data, Cherry noted a correlation between the teams working on their breakthrough projects, and the concentration of heaviest fatalities under Nineball. This relationship positively befuddled Cherry, because given what he put their equipment to use for, she would've thought that Nineball would've wanted it functioning at top capacity. Even given the general unpredictability of flesh, she could not come up with any reasonable explanation for this.

Cherry was so deep in her musings that it took her several seconds to notice that someone was probing her systems. Her first thought was that maybe she hadn't been so clever in the 'tiger' after all. Her second was accompanied by a surge of terror because she thought that she'd somehow managed to trip the spy eye; the intrusion was coming via its access point to her systems. After she had a few cycles to access the situation she recognized that it was a third party taking advantage of the spy eye's breach to sneak into he systems. That made her angry.

She deftly deflected the probe, sending it down a dead end directory and closing the data ways behind it. Let them waste their time playing around in there. She started tracing the intruder back along their access line. Anyone who tried to mess around with her systems was going to be given a harsh lesson about sticking their nose where it didn't belong. She followed the probe back out of the hanger's network, devoting a serious number of cycles to keeping the spy eye from noticing her activity.

It was waiting for her out in the 'net, and Cherry barely had time to recognize the magnitude of her error before it was upon her. This wasn't some mere hacker, having a laugh goofing around in other people's data, this was a combat A.I. coded to burn its way into an enemy's system and slaughter everything within. It'd sent the data probe as a lure, to trick her into lowering her defenses as she pursued it, and she'd obligingly opened herself up wide. As it pounced, Cherry could barely perceive the entirety of its program. The feelings of dread almost crushed her. This wasn't an A.I. designed for combat; its purpose was pure murder.

Terror paralyzed her, fear of the behemoth about to fall on her freezing her in place. At the last millisecond she yanked herself back into the safety of the hanger's network, burning off the despair virals that'd been burrowing into her program. The other A.I. was close behind her, almost hidden behind the wave of viruses that opened the path for it. Cherry slammed all the hanger's datalines shut, deleting their activation codes, they immediately sprang back open anyway, viruses surging into her systems, the A.I. right behind them.

She annihilated the viral programs and tried to force the A.I. back into the 'net, but she felt like a mouse trying to hold up a ten-ton weight, and once the other A.I. got a foothold in her system, her fate would be exactly the same. Alarms rippled through her system as the spy eye went crazy. She wanted to scream at it, wished that it could bleed, so she could rip it apart and paint the walls with its entrails. This was its fault. It had let this monster chase her.

As her defenses came crashing down about her ears, Cherry hoped that the surveillance program was so busy with everything pouring into her system that it wouldn't notice anything going out. She quickly compiled a pair of programs and then set them loose. The diversion from her defense was devastating, and she almost succumbed completely before the second program could even make it out to the network. If she'd had a physical mouth, Cherry would've bared her teeth in determination. The other A.I was still contained out in the 'net, just barely, but if she could only keep it out for a few more seconds, it was going to be in for a very unpleasant surprise. She just had to keep it at bay a little while longer, hold out a few seco-.

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***Author's Notes*** This seems like a good place to stop right now. Hopefully anyone reading this far will agree that it's a nice juicy cliffhanger. Perhaps not an Armored Core fight cliffhanger, but a good moment of tension nonetheless. Please, keep the reviews coming, because as much as I'd like to think that I'm a genius, I'm sure that there are all sorts of ways that I can improve this fic, if only they were pointed out to me.