Chapter 7: Pressure
"I am, she's actually really smart," Marco admitted, motioning towards the young woman.
"What is your name?" Symon asked. The woman looked at Symon warily.
"Bella. My name's Bella. How hard did you hit Marco?"
"You're lucky I didn't kill him."
"Por dios, does he need a doctor!?"
"Never a bad idea."
"Guys, just got the wind knocked out of me," Marco insisted as he struggled to pull himself up. "I can take a… punch."
"No need to act tough, Marco, just rest a bit. And you," Bella began, turning towards Symon, "you wanted to talk? What, lecture us before turning us in?"
"Is that you want?"
"I want to know what you want."
"Like I said, I just want to talk. Let's begin. What exactly was your plan?" Symon started.
"You a badge? Looking for a confession?" Bella retorted.
"No. I am, however, a man with a gun. A man you just tried to rob."
Bella glanced at the copperhead. The lights in her eyes moved momentarily. She took a deep breath.
"Ok. I got a signature on that laptop you're carrying. It has information someone's looking for. They're paying good money for it. Marco was supposed to lead you to the alley and into the room. If you had cyberware, I could short circuit it. If not, it's two versus one out of public view. We demand the laptop, tell you to leave, and then run for it. No one was supposed to get hurt," Bella explained.
"The empty gun?" Symon noted. Bella pulled out a magazine from her pocket.
"Wouldn't be empty once you got in here."
"Don't trust your partner?" Symon observed.
"No, just… I didn't want anyone to get hurt. Besides, I thought about if you grabbed the gun off him… which did actually happen… you couldn't use it on him," Bella responded. "I could also jam your own gun if you pulled one on Marco."
"These guns?" Symon asked, motioning towards his copperhead and his pistol holster.
"It wasn't a perfect plan, ok? I didn't account for… netless weapons…" Bella admitted.
"You have a knife and you didn't think of netless weapons."
"I get it, the plan failed, alright? We all know that. I screwed up. It was dumb. I didn't think about you overpowering Marco. Right now, I realize I didn't even think about you yelling for the badges," Bella bursted.
"You just judged things poorly," Symon said calmly.
"Like you said, I'm stupid."
"You're not, Bella. You're not. This was my plan, too," Marco jumped in, slowly leaning up.
"He's right. You're not. Not completely," Symon agreed. Bella looked up.
"What do you mean?"
Symon tapped on his helmet. "The security systems inside this helmet were vetted by a Netwatch Aegis team. It's not an easy thing to break into so quickly," Symon explained.
"It's… it was solid maybe a few months ago. Some exploits still exist. Seems like you haven't updated it in a bit," Bella noted.
"You were certain you could have jammed my weapons?"
"Of course… if they were, um, normal. Net connected, I mean. Some weapons take longer than others, but the process is usually the same," Bella replied.
"You have information about what's in this laptop. Can other netrunners find it, too?"
"Yeah, ICE on it's not great. If you're worried about people finding it, I don't know why you didn't turn it off."
"Do that for me," Symon requested. He pulled the laptop out of the bag and slid it over. Bella grabbed it and used her wrist wire to connect to it.
"There. Easy enough."
"You can shut down cyberware, too?" Symon inquired.
"Not shut down, but there's a lot of things I could do. I could short circuit it or overheat it, just to name two. For you though…" Bella trailed off, "There was… nothing I could do."
"Man, don't tell me I got beat up by a normal dude!" Marco despaired, "No way you move that fast doing squats!"
"How do you know I'm not with the Animals?" Symon suggested.
"Ok, give me some credit, man," Marco chuckled, "One, look at you. You're not an Animal. Two, I wouldn't have messed with an Animal. Not that close, anyway. But how did you beat me so badly?"
"Wouldn't you like to know."
"If you got chrome, I don't see it. I only noticed something when you turned on that helmet. Even then, it wasn't long enough for me to do anything," Bella stated.
"I wouldn't worry about it now. I want to know more about the information on the laptop. Who's paying for it?" Symon asked, changing the conversation.
"It was a quiet posting by the Tyger Claws. They gave it to some internal contacts. Reward of 20,000 eddies per device with information on the Wire Vipers and a company called Graturn. That laptop has both of those names somewhere in it," Bella explained.
Graturn? That's not good, Symon thought.
"20,000? And you accessed their internal network?" Symon wanted to verify. Bella gave a small, devilish grin.
"You'd be surprised how relaxed the security was. Does sound a little too good to be true. What could the Tyger Claws want with that laptop?"
"I believe it, because the Tyger Claws probably had nothing to do with that posting. Not on their own, at least."
"What do you mean," Bella asked, perplexed.
"I don't know much about the Tyger Claws beyond what they show you up front. However, I do know some of them have ties to Arasaka. Let's say I can think of a few reasons why Arasaka might want that information."
"Arasaka!?" Marco exclaimed excitedly.
"Arasaka?" Bella repeated, worriedly.
"Seems like it's information they'd rather not have out in the wild. I'm sure you're smart enough to figure out what would happen when they discover you two know about it," Symon warned.
"Ah man, Arasaka secrets? Preem! We'd be up to our necks in contracts!" Marco rejoiced.
"No, they'd have our necks sliced open once they put two and two together," Bella responded.
"Bella's more right," Symon noted.
"But I'm not wrong," Marco inferred.
"Not completely wrong, but more wrong. Have you two ever considered where I got the laptop from?" Marco and Bella looked at each other in thought. "You can add that to the list of things you didn't consider. I stole it from Wire Vipers that were alive this morning," Symon elaborated. Bella looked a little contrite while Marco seemed impressed. "I want to know what's on the laptop. It'll stay between you and me. 1000 eddies on what you can find right now and 4000 eddies if you can get me all the details." Marco and Bella looked up in consideration.
"It's not even half," Marco said with some contempt.
"I'll take it," Bella agreed.
"Bella, but… we got an opportunity!"
"We sure do. 500 eddies for both of us in hand right now we don't even need to see a Tyger Claw. Besides, it's his laptop."
"You're inexperienced, not stupid. You didn't even try negotiating," Symon taunted.
"I'm trying not to anger the man with the gun," Bella returned.
"Fair. Still, believe it or not, you're the one in a position of power," Symon chuckled, pointing at Bella's connected wrist port. Bella realized what he meant.
"2000 up front?" Bella suggested.
"Done. No changes now," Symon agreed, pulling out three eurodollar cards. "By the way, the money on the table upfront was 3000. Your first lesson." He gave her two. Her eyes widened at the green cards. Shiny metal streaks flowed in patterns inside it. Breaking out of the trance, she gave one card to Marco. Despite what he said earlier, he was also entranced by the shiny card.
"Now, I want whatever intel you can give me right now."
Bella set to work looking through the laptop. It looked like it was wiped and repurposed within the last two weeks. Directories showed up with names like Arasaka and Biotechnica. Smaller names appeared, too such as Graturn Logistics and Medelocality. Access to the directories, however, was heavily restricted. Bella noted breaking through them might take time. There were some easier pieces of information to grab.
"Look at that. Our friends here had an outside contact. Went by the name Echelon. Looks like he was sending over the restricted files currently in the system," Bella noted.
"Who is Echelon?" Symon asked.
"Don't say. Again, code name. He does say the restricted files contain information on the agreed service requests, but nothing else. He was pretty vague," Bella observed.
"And the files?"
"The laptop's general security is poor to say the least, but these files are pretty well protected. Requires a physical key for verification. You didn't steal that by chance?" Bella asked. Symon shook his head. "It's going to take a bit of time to do a work around. I'll have to do some digging."
"Where in the laptop does it reference the Wire Vipers?"
"Some other communication lines. Some chat rooms. Each group has a name. Wire Vipers 1. Wire Vipers 3. This one was Wire Vipers 2. Status updates mainly, by the looks of it. What does this say? 'ARA Martin St. 18:30? GRA Longshore, 1:30?' Any idea what that means?" Bella wondered, looking at both Symon and Marco.
"All this stuff's going over my head, choomba. What's GRA?" Marco replied. He was up, but still holding onto his gut.
Probably communicating Arasaka and Graturn transport movement, Symon considered.
"Maybe you'll find out once you get into the other files. What else can you find right now?" Symon asked.
"That's mostly it. Some inventory information about weapons available. Oh, look at that!" Bella exclaimed. "Someone wasn't careful enough. Miltech. Don't have to tell me twice who that is." Symon looked at the screen to see what she was talking about.
The chat read as follows:
What's miltech want with biotechnica anyway? They don't even sell the same things
Only thing big corps care about more than themselves are other big corps. Doesn't matter if one sells noodles and the other sells machine guns
"Perhaps Echelon was a Militech contact. Not surprising if that's the case," Symon inferred.
"Wait. Who exactly were the Wire Vipers? Mercs?" Bella asked.
"They were mercs. I think they were posing as a gang in the Northside, though. They don't exist anymore if there were only 3 groups. I got this laptop from one of them," Symon answered.
"I guess Militech was using them like that so they could deny involvement?" Bella guessed.
"Of course. Corps love their proxies. Which reminds me. That posting by the Tyger Claws. I'd like more details on who's who. Finer details. Think you can do that?" Symon asked.
"3000 eddies," Bella declared.
"500."
"2000."
"Done. Now, don't be expecting those payouts all the time or that I'll even humor negotiations all the time. These are special circumstances," Symon added, handing over two more cards. They exchanged contact information as well. "I'll call you, not the other way around. I don't care what the reason is. You two stay out of trouble until then," Symon stated before he began heading out the door.
"Hey wait a minute," Bella asked. Symon paused. "Just like that, you go from beating down Marco…"
"Hey, I didn't get beat that bad."
"…to paying us all these eddies for some secret information. Who are you?"
"First off, you started off by trying to mug me, so that should answer the first part. However, you also happen to have exactly what I need right now. I know for a fact that you're not telling anyone about this information, right?" Symon paused, waiting for a reaction. Bella caught on and began nodding and Marco followed suit. "You have immediate information on this laptop and who's searching for it. Time's valuable, so you get a premium. As for who I am? Don't worry about it. Do what I ask, and you'll get paid well enough," Symon elaborated. He turned his helmet on to look around for anyone in the alley. Satisfied it was empty, he put his hand on the handle before looking back one last time. "Your enemies today could be your friends tomorrow, and the other way around. Consider that your second lesson." Symon walked out the door.
"You've been putting these things through their paces recently, haven't you?" Dr. Taylor observed as he inspected the actuators on Symon's exposed arm. The synthetic skin was pulled apart at Symon's wrist to reveal industrial looking machinery. It lacked the typical interfaces used by ripperdocs.
"I work out. Sometimes I have to run to work," Symon responded.
"I can't stress enough how careful you have to be with these. Few augmentations like these exist on the market, if any. I'm still not completely familiar with all the subsystems," Dr. Taylor emphasized.
"Good thing money's not a concern," Symon replied.
"With how much time I've spent figuring what I could, I can't disagree. Clench now." Symon made a fist. Taylor attached a device to the actuator and had Symon unclench. "Didn't help that the paper manuals you gave me were all in Russian, of which you don't speak much. Really doesn't help that I can't wirelessly connect to run diagnostics."
"I imagine you get a lot of cyberware from different countries."
"I do, but they have the courtesy of digital manuals, so I can translate them quickly. They're also net connected most of the time. Any issues as of late?"
"No issues, but I want to be sure it stays that way."
"Nothing appears to be showing up, just some wear on the moving parts. Will still be a bit before you'll need them replaced. Push on the pad," Taylor requested. Symon did as instructed and Taylor examined the readings. "No decrease in output power. Hit something hard enough and you'll kill it. That brings me back to my point of being careful."
"Don't worry, I don't go out of my way looking for fights," Symon lied smoothly.
"I'm still surprised at how much power you put out without synthetic muscles. I could write a whole paper on your forearm alone," Taylor noted as he began to sow back up the synthetic skin.
"It's not something I like to advertise," Symon replied.
"If I did, you'd be anonymous, of course. Actually, I would appreciate it a lot. The whole ripperdoc community would."
"I'll think about it." Symon paid Dr. Taylor and headed out. The clinic wasn't anything special. That was exactly why Simon went there. If anyone could find out anything about Symon's true past, it would be there. However, why would anyone be looking in quiet Heywood for intel on some logistics employee? Why would they want to find a typical ripperdoc if they're trying to look into advanced, experimental cyberware. It was one of the ways Symon hid in plain sight. Satisfied with the results, he went back to his apartment.