I do not own Virus Buster Serge, or Mirei. The characters of Sunny, Kenji, and Chief Harata are mine.
Chapter 2- Birthday
The second the elevator doors slid open, Mirei was assaulted by a sandy-haired girl two years her senior, who was juggling a portable viewscreen in one hand and a stack of small boxes in the other.
"Mirei! There you are! You picked a great day to be late! I have three messages from the Chief that are marked Highest Priority, the tech support team in North America has been screaming my ear off for half an hour now about some error message when they initiate the Synchronization Protocol, and The Style Center in the Ginza seems to all ready be running short on inventory…" The girl stopped abruptly in mid sentence, and shoved the stack of boxes at a young man who was cowering behind Mirei in the elevator.
" Kenji! Don't just stand there! Take these down to Laboratory 6A now! They are waiting for you!" The sandy-haired girl spat the words out as she turned on her heel, leaving the young man with his mouth open, a half-formed response stuck in his throat.
Mirei cleared her throat, and turned to the young man.
"Better do what she says, Kenji. Looks like Sunny's on the warpath, and no one is safe!"
Mirei stepped out of the elevator, and the stainless steel doors slid shut silently behind her.
"Oh, I'm sorry Mirei. I shouldn't have yelled like that… at you, or at Kenji. This is just… You know. Today's the big day. The day we've all been working for. Sonata's birthday!" Tears welled up in Sunny's eyes, fighting with the huge grin that spread across her face.
"I'm so sorry. Forgive my rude behavior, Mirei-san." Sunny continued as she bowed deeply.
Mirei smiled at Sunny as she strode across the huge room that was Project Sonata's administrative center.
"It's OK, Sunny. I know this is a big day. I'm sorry that I'm late. I'll take those messages from the chief in my office now. Tell the tech people in North America to enter alpha-numeric sequence gamma when they see the error message- that should clear it. Tell Ginza that a second shipment will come in this afternoon."
"Yes! I'll get right on it! I knew you'd know just what to do!" Sunny beamed as she darted off in another direction.
Mirei opened the door to her office, and sat down behind the desk. Gauzy shades covered the large windows, and the small room seemed to glow with a surreal blue light. The large glass desk in the middle of the room was covered in an avalanche of viewscreens, small boxes, bits and pieces of computer chips and boards, and little character mascots and solar toys. Mirei cleared all of this aside, and pulled out her keyboard from the sliding tray under her desk. She initiated holoprojection, and began scrolling through the interoffice memos. When she arrived at the ones from Division Chief Harata, she paused and clicked on "open". A message popped up, informing Mirei that this was a Restricted Communication, and could only be viewed through her implant interface. She put a small headband-like device on her head, and plugged it into the port on the side of her keyboard. Suddenly, the room around her disappeared, and an image of Chief Harata flickered to life in her head. The chief was imposingly handsome, with his neatly trimmed dark hear, impeccable suit, and piercing blue eyes that looked out coolly from behind wire-rimmed glasses reminded her of someone… someone who had disappointed her greatly once…
"Congratulations on the success of Sonata, Team Leader McCann. We are all ready receiving positive sales reports from the Pacific Rim market. We are pleased to…" Mirei willed the message to skip forward, past the obligatory congratulations.
"… as you know, your former affiliation with LL Corporation and STAND makes you a unique asset for our organization. We have recently acquired some new files from the LL project archives that were supposed to be transferred to Atlas after the buyout four years ago, but seem to only recently have resurfaced in an old data drive that was mistakenly classified as peripheral. I would like you to have a look at some of this old data at your earliest possible convenience, as I feel it is important to take full advantage of any useful research LL might have…"
Again, Mirei fast-forwarded through the message.
"…I have forwarded you the first file, and would like you to report to me next week on its contents, Team Leader McCann. Again, congratulations on a job well…"
Mirei sighed as she broke the connection with the message server and removed the implant interface from her head.
"What a great birthday present- for me, and for Sonata." Mirei grumbled to herself as she picked a viewscreen up from her desk , paged through the memos on the screen, and tossed it back down. "One project isn't really enough, is it?"
She stood up, straightened herself, and walked back out into the buzzing administrative center.