... and Happy New Year

When the others had left Jensen took a while to consider his situation. Things were spiraling out of hand way too fast. Regardless how much he hated it he wasn't able to do much and instead was completely on Pritchard's mercy. To that end the snarky techie had proven to be surprisingly reliable, especially seeing their not so amicable past. There was not many people Jensen could or would trust anymore.

At one time he had trusted Megan, as much as he had loved her. Even after they had separated the love hadn't left, only changed. When Megan had arranged him the job at Sarif Industries after the incident at his job with police forces Jensen had thought it had been out of respect towards his skills and trust to his capabilities. He couldn't have even imagined she had only wanted to keep her precious patient X close.

He had also trusted mister Sarif who had made him feel welcome when he'd started at Sarif Industries and seemed to have valued him for his abilities. Jensen hadn't actually thought about it but by the conversations he had witnessed between the boss and Megan, the boss must have known who the patient X was as well. Maybe that had been why he had taken such liberties while kitting Jensen after the attack.

When Jensen had woken up after the heavy operations and found out the enormity of the enhancements, he had been angry. He had understood well enough that without mister Sarif's generous help he would have surely been dead but to have been needlessly butchered had been a hard piece to swallow. Still he had agreed to believe that mister Sarif had given all that to him in a foolish attempt to compensate the losses he'd experienced. He had known he was an asset to the company but he had thought he used them at least as much towards his own ends, to get revenge for Megan. All that had crumbled away when he had found her alive and fairly content to her position.

Thinking back now Jensen realised he had trusted Pritchard too since the beginning. They had their differences and had rarely seen eye to eye about anything, not to mention their constant bickering, but still he had trusted the guy to do his best and look out for him when supporting him on the field. Having been as opinionated as he was, Pritchard was clearly used to thinking by himself rather than just following the company agenda, which might have been part of the reason Jensen had felt safe enough to escape here. The other part propably was that he couldn't think many people in Detroit he both trusted and would have assumed to be able to fix him in the state he had been in. If even Pritchard would betray him now he wasn't sure he'd bother to fight anymore.

To distract himself from the heavy thoughts Jensen looked around and found the communication gadget on a cardboard box which served as a nightstand. He couldn't help but laugh at the practicalness of that as well as few other furniture choices he now noticed. The apartment was not messy as such but clearly the outlook of things had not been the main concern. Jensen wondered if he might have been the first guest there while he grabbed the device. Pritchard had been right that it was easy enough for him and it didn't take long to be able to establish the connection.

A quiet chime told the elevator had arrived at the top floor. Pritchard stepped out clutching the portable media where he had prepared an actual security update to give himself some credibility. He wasn't sure how well versed mister Sarif was with his computer. Not enough to stop Pritchard to be able to hack into it, of that he was sure, but he might have understood enough to notice the lack of claimed update. After all he had been able to open that back door to the company network, even if not skilled enough to protect it properly. Pritchard tried to seem as self confident as ever when he strode towards the secretary's desk.

"Hey, I've got an update to do for boss's computer. Can I go in or is he in the middle of something?"

Margoulis took a glance at him and pointed towards the main office door. "Mister Sarif is out right now but I'm sure you know the way." She was smiling as she pressed a button to open the lock of the door.

Pritchard was always snarly and known to be on a bad mood every time he had to leave his office, largely because most of the time he could do all of his work from there, and that certainly helped to give him an air of one who didn't want to be hindered any more than necessary. However, Margoulis was a clever person with years of experience to read people and it was a common assumption she had similar social enhancers as Jensen had been given. Had she not been chatting with Malik who was sitting on the edge of her desk, she might have still paid more attention to Pritchard's attitude.

That had been Malik's own idea when she'd heard what Pritchard was planning to do. She'd told she knew the one way to engage the attention of the secretary enough for her to not pay too much attention to other familiar faces was juicy office gossip, and she'd just heard some new bits she hadn't shared yet. Pritchard had never understood that particular habit but had welcomed the distraction anyway. He headed to the office while the women continued with their stories.

Pritchard had known the office would be empty as he had seen the boss leaving on a security cam just moments before he had headed upstairs. Apparently it had been a last minute invite to an interview by the Picus News, and he wasn't sure if it was a coincidence or Eliza trying to be helpful. Applying the update was a breeze and getting in the user account of mister Sarif was not too much harder. Under other circumstances Pritchard would have reminded himself to reprimand mister Sarif about how easy it had been to gain access, but at this time it would have just raised too much questions. Instead he just downloaded everything seemingly interesting to a portable storage device to sort through it later. He was just wondering how easy all of it had been when he heard the main office private elevator arriving.

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