Bubblegum Crisis: Stage Three
Chapter 31
"Hmm, morning," Nene murmured, cuddling up to her lover.
"Morning," Sylia agreed, a arm wrapped around Nene.
"You kept me up," Nene teased. She added, "For that, you should get me breakfast in bed."
"Ha. You know I'm awful at cooking," Sylia chuckled.
"Yeah, yeah," Nene got up, stretching.
"You COULD come back to bed," Sylia noted, taking in her nude form admiringly.
"But I'm hungry," Nene pouted, then put her robe on before getting breakfast going.
Sylia reluctantly got up and asked, "Coffee or juice?"
"Coffee," Nene said as she got eggs going and set up the toast. "I want to nose around Gulf and Bradly's systems later."
"Work on our Saturday?" Sylia noted. "So scandalous."
Nene snickered. "You got my memo on them, right?" she asked.
"We know they did industrial espionage, and they've made recent attempts to breech our systems," Sylia nodded.
"I'm wondering why they're trying to raid our systems again, when they got our basic boomer designs," Nene admitted as she flipped the eggs.
"Looking for updates?" Sylia said dryly.
"Maybe," Nene conceded, "but I'm wondering if they're having similar problems with rogue boomers too."
"Shit," Sylia blinked as she processed that idea. "But wouldn't it hit the news?" she asked her lover thoughtfully.
"Well, we know that Genom has kept all the incidents, other than harmless ones, out of the news," Nene pointed out as she dished up the food, "and G&B is huge in Texas. They have the leverage to kill the stories."
"Geh," Sylia sighed, "I'll do some digging into that while you hack them." As they talked, both began to eat.
"Only this morning," Nene munched, "we'll have fun this afternoon."
"Not that hacking isn't fun," Sylia added.
"We DO think alike..," Nene chuckled.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0
"Oh, thank god a day off," Linna sighed happily.
Reika Chang chuckled as they sat at the dining table, drinking coffee. "Well, we're on call," she pointed out.
"Ok, praying no boomer attacks happen around Sylia or Nene," Linna conceded.
"At least the chances of anything happening at the office are now lower," Reika noted, referring to how they had fixed the office boomers to keep them from being overridden.
Linna looked over at her lover as she asked, "Do you want to quit the bodyguard thing? I know you don't really like doing it."
Reika shrugged, "I think the issues still apply. Even if we quit, whomever targeted Sylia could still be gunning for us. I'd rather have us be in a group, with backup."
Linna nodded, "True enough."
"All right, enough serious talk," Reika said as she smiled at Linna, "we should do something on our days off."
"Dinner out?" Linna suggested. Neither one of them liked to cook.
"Ha. Yeah. Dancing, maybe?" Reika suggested, "We haven't done that in a long time."
"I usually rather do the horizontal dancing, but that's fun too," Linna teased.
"Bad girl," Reika laughed. "We'll do THAT when we get home."
"Meanie," Linna winked.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0
Priss Asagiri backed up as the three men got closer, marching towards her up the ally. One had a knife, the other a baseball bat, a third a length of chain.
"You boys really don't want to do this," Priss warned them.
"Hey, we're getting paid well for this," the knife guy grinned, "though we'd do a babe like you for free."
'Paid?' Priss noted. It was probably that asshole Kiyo Yoshimizu, still pissed as her over what happened to his niece.
"This is gonna be fun," bat guy grinned.
"It really isn't," Priss gave them one last chance.
"Ha!" the one guy swung his chain.
Priss caught it on the armored sleeve of her jacket, then yanked him forward. She then drove the heel of her other hand into his face, breaking his nose wetly.
"Argh!: the chain dude staggered back.
Priss charged the bat user, grabbing at the weapon before he could swing. She yanked it from his grip, closed with the man and casually kneed him in the nuts.
"Eeep," he yelped.
The knife guy hesitated, even as Priss casually dropped the second guy. "Grab your buddies and go," she said, "last chance."
"Shit," the guy helped his battered allies up, and all three ran away.
Priss sighed, glad she hadn't had to pull a pistol. That would have been messy...
"Holy fuck, that was awesome," a male voice noted.
"Thanks for rushing to help me," Priss said wryly, turning to see her band mate.
Gideon was taller, and was older than her, and was very good with keyboards. "Like you needed it," he noted, smiling.
"Point," Priss walked over to him and the back door to the dingy night club. "Is everyone here?" she asked him.
"Yup," Gideon agreed, "thank you for agreeing to cover for our singer tonight."
"Do I want to know why Leslie flaked out?" Priss asked.
"Let's just say we're going to be talking about if she still wants to be in this band," Gideon tiredly sighed.
Priss patted him on the arm, "Sorry, dude."
"You looking for another lead singer gig?" Gideon asked optimistically.
"I've got too much shit going on right now," Priss shook her head.
"Had to ask," Gideon said as they hit the 'green room' where the rest of the band waited.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0
"Everybody else is having a nice weekend, but me? Noooo," Naoko Asami sighed.
Leon McNicol was also there, along with several clerical types. "This sucks," Leon agreed.
They had received a key and had decoded the files belonging to Brian Mason, the murdered Genom executive who, it turned out, was hugely dirty. The problem was the sheer volume of data they were digging through.
"Is this actually a blackmail file?" Marie Sanders asked, sending the file over to Leon's terminal.
"Holy shit," Leon blinked as he started flipping through entries. "Oh hell, this file is going to be radioactive."
Naoko looked over, "Oh?"
"He had dirt on a lot of local politicians," Leon was reading, "and a few now ex-cops."
"Oh joy. Do we need to send copies over to Internal Affairs?" Naoko asked.
"Probably a good idea," Leon agreed.
"Well, at least now I have a long list of folks who'd want Mason dead," Naoko noted as she skimmed the entries.
"He was supposedly killed in a drug deal gone bad, right?" Daniel Wisner asked.
"Supposedly," Leon nodded.
"Can anyone find any files backing that up?" Dan asked.
"Huh. Good observation," Naoko agreed, "we can run the files through a search engine, but it's likely Mason used codewords."
"Even in his private files?" Leon asked.
"He was head of Genom security," Naoko reminded him, "he had to have known his files could be accessed."
"Yeah, point," Leon conceded.
"Holy shit," Marie blurted.
"What?" Naoko asked.
"He has DETAILED FILES of all the dirty stuff he did for Genom too," Marie noted.
Leon looked at the huge files, "Yeah, we're gonna be here for awhile."
To be continued...
