Watson
W.F. & W. Warehouse.
Sasha wasn't sure exactly what kind of welcome she would get from the fixer, most of the time the man was laid back and easy going.
Mac wasn't one of the bigger name's in fixer circles but he was friends with or at least on good terms with all the major fixers so having him pissed off at you for a fuck up didn't do great things for ones rep or job prospects. Maine, Dorio and herself were seated in front of his desk, the man looked like a retired grandfather, blue jeans, a white tank top under an open Hawaiian shirt the only visible chrome were his black cyberarms and his eyes that were currently glowing blue, probably reviewing the details and retrieved security logs from the job. Mac finally looked at the trio as his eyes returned to normal color.
"Well Biotechnica has officially called off the hunt, all the security logs and footage have been scrubbed so there is no longer a trace of your involvement.
now Sasha I trust you have made a full recovery from your ordeal?"
Sasha nodded not sure what to say or even if she should say anything. Maine and Dorio weren't of much help in that department either simply sitting silently. The fixer looked each of them over.
"Now the job should have been a milk run for you, I even went to the trouble of getting you a janitorial access pass so that between it and your jammer all you had to do was walk in, access the terminal in the targets office and retrieve the files the client wanted. Bip, bop, boop, and most importantly no bang or boom a nice discreet job, alas Sasha you seem to have forgotten what discreet means. Now had you simply asked for my help after the job to to collet the data you wanted we could have avoided all this trouble."
Mac pulls up some security footage on his desk monitor for them to see.
"Instead you transferred a copy of all the data to network 54's tip line which took a few minutes longer than the jammer would last, I don't have to tell you what happened after that. The leak didn't even amount to much, they fired a few middle managers, updated the warning label on the bottles and the whole thing faded from public memory in time for a Monday morning bowl of choco crisp. Now the good news is you did get the clients files and while the client wasn't thrilled about the fiasco it did cover up the theft so they didn't raise too many complaints. So you will still be getting paid though not what you would have gotten had you done the job quietly."
Sasha winces at the fact she nearly got killed trying to get some small measure of justice for her mother and it was ultimately worthless.
"It was all for nothing, those bastards didn't even care just threw some money around and some patsies under the bus."
Dorio hugs Sasha as she's shaking in rage and trying to keep back the tears. Mac sighs then pours the three runners and himself each a drink.
"It's hard to do any kind of real damage to a corp, break into their secure basement data archives, fight through a bunch of their goons lead by a corpo ninja with a magnificent rack and set up a suitcase nuke to blow the place to hell. corp gets a good slap to the face sure but we all know how that story ended up going."
Maine lowers his sunglasses staring at the man in shock.
"You were involved in the tower bombing?"
Mac shrugs and downs his scotch.
"That was a lifetime ago and I was a different man, lost some good chooms, accidently burned down a good portion of my home city and what did it get us, not a fucking thing.
Don't throw your lives away on some pointless crusade to bring the corps down, sure as fuck didn't do Johnny Silverhand any good. Just focus on surviving the jobs, get all the eddies you can and try to carve out the best life possible in this shit stain of a world. Let some other stupid gonk get an overpriced drink named after them."
Dorio looks up from a now calmer Sasha.
"Thought you'd be more pissed off at us."
Mac breaks out in laughter.
"No no I'm not pissed off, disappointed yes but I'm not like that asshole Faraday. Job still got done even if you made a mess of it, the client is mostly satisfied, you're still alive and hopefully you learned a valuable life lesson. Just do me a huge favor and don't fuck up the next job like this or I'll have to reevaluate the utility of keeping you on the payroll."
The three runners nodded knowing that any other fixer may well have kicked them to the curb and kept the pay for the heat they brought down.
"Well I don't have any jobs lined up right now that'd be worth your time but if you'll help me with an ongoing project it'll be worth a modest stack of eddies."
The desk monitor changes from the security footage to two pictures of a young teen side by side.
An obvious wannabe tiger claw with a mohawk and Motoko Kusanagi.
"Motoko Kusanagi aka Ghost in the Shell aka Onryo depending on who you ask. Only surviving relative Jun Kusinagi aka the Oni. The image you see here is of Motoko before and after being under the less than gentile care of some Scavs. Has no memory of her time prior to awakening from her coma and significant personality alterations, this by itself wouldn't be worth noting as while not common has happened enough times to be considered a normal result of such trauma. What has drawn my attention and that of a few other interested parties is this."
Video screens on the wall show footage of her various exploits.
"So how does a 14 year old would be gang goon so quickly gain the skills of an experienced Merc & assassin?
Skill chips cannot account for such gains and as you can see from the footage Motoko has taken a number of rather severe injuries in some of her exploits.
Yet she is seen the next day as if she never got injured to begin with, she's forcefully implanted with those cyberarms by a less than skilled ripper and yet within a week or two has fully acclimated to them inspire of the trauma."
Sasha examines the footage carefully
"Mac where did you get this footage, it looks almost like it's from the eyes of the gonks she's killed."
Mac pours himself another glass of scotch.
"That would be because it is, a number of the rippers in NC use a program I sold that removes certain corporate installed tricks. Planned obsolescence programs, anti tampering security features to keep third party technicians from doing work on them and of course a installs healthly dose of my backdoor spy programs so quite a few sets of legally hazy eyes & ears now gather information for me. Now as to the matter at hand, Motoko Kusanagi has no memory of her past, a drastic personality shift, acquires and hones skills at a frankly insane speed and seems to recover from injuries in a matter of hours and serious trauma in a matter of days. I only know of a couple ways this is possible and given her chosen nom de guerre of Ghost in the Shell I fear it may be AI related. What I need is for you to keep an eye on her, look out for any odd behaviors, memory lapses, personality shifts and unexplained recoveries."
Sasha's face goes pale.
"Do you really think she's been possessed by an AI?"
Mac closes his eyes and lets out a long tired sigh.
"God I hope not because the last thing I ever want to do is get netwatch to call out a hit on a kid again."