As head of internal security for Arasaka Academy, he was well aware of his skills and his limitations. Spies had informed him that he was known as "not pretty enough to be a street fighter" in the upper levels of the company, but that was fine. Security management was far better than brutish brawling and if insults to his appearance were forefront, then things had actually been looking pretty good. At least until this recent series of debacles. Thanks to whatever CEO ran reality, the intrusions had been stealthy enough to leave no electronic trail and the direct witnesses were just a bunch of students too jealous to make a big deal of it, and one teacher to bribe into silence.
Sun Lee's thoughts were interrupted by an alert from his biomonitor, and he quickly glanced around at his team to make sure he hadn't missed anything important before checking it. Another stupid cryptic alert code. CAF/LD10 meant nothing to him, but would probably blow his budget if it triggered a pointless Trauma Team call-out. He squelched it and tried to focus. More coffee? His hands were shaking a bit too much, but unlike most gonks in the building, his past self was a genius. Nobody in the corp would be caught dead with a skill chip for tea ceremonies, but who would blink at a British skill chip? With the macro triggered, his arm automatically reached out with confidence, and grabbed the cup. A pinky finger extended gracefully, and it delivered the high octane fuel to his lips with precision.
Right. The team, and the mission. He was quite proud of the loyalty he had instilled in his crew. Barely any blackmail had been needed, and the team was still together after three long days of stakeout. No hint of activity yet, but the clock was running down. Sure, there had been a couple close calls. That Militech commando team on Tuesday was still concerning. They had distracted away nearly a third of his crew and almost made it inside through an upper floor balcony. The next morning had been a stressful split between holding the defense line and trying to sweep for anything that may have snuck in while they were short handed.
It was only an hour to go when one of his interns flashed yellow on the status board and he jerked to attention again. Her immediate manager stepped over to look, and immediately upgraded it to a red. One of the external cameras had glitched, and the neon signs on a neighbouring building were out of synch with other camera feeds.
Sun Lee jumped to his feet and suppressed another biom warning in order to take decisive command. "All teams to full alert! Water team! Slow down all network traffic in that area! Make it look like automated responses and scheduled maintenance, we don't want to alert them yet! Wind team! Backtrace the data flows and FIND THAT NETRUNNER! Rock team! Go full defense on this command center! Fire team! Load up be ready to move! Likely destination is still classroom 13C! Leaf team! Maintain full vigilance for other intrusion vectors, this could be another distraction!"
The overhyped 5th floor meeting room burst into activity, and the management overlay lit up with the green tinted technical jargon traffic indicators. These full body trembles of anticipation must be what it felt like to be Adam Smasher about to punch through an APC.
"Wind team reporting! Disruption source is inside the building! Floor 12."
"Fire team, move in! Protect the administration staff, and find that source!"
"Updated detail: backtrace is dead ended at terminal 1254, Ishigawa's desk. A massive data flow is delaying the camera feed."
Fire team's progress through the building felt painfully slow as the clock ticked forward and the buzz of the team ratcheted up with a lack of further results. A couple false alarms from Leaf team came and went in the background notifications, and a medium priority message from Smoke team queued up, but it would have to wait. Fire team had reached the office entrance, and hopefully they'd be in time to foil the intruder.
"Fire team breaching... now."
"No hostiles. Securing the target node."
"Network disruption has terminated."
"Sir, site is secure, disruption was... benign. I'm marking the details confidential and forwarding them to you."
Shit. This was bad. He'd over-committed due to the short time remaining and the classroom had been left exposed. Maybe Smoke had something?
*Smoke team update: Source M has leaked that the target left town and has been gone all week. Lack of peer-to-peer funds transfers at T-30 minutes is strong supporting evidence.*
He deflated as the room faded away from his awareness. All this for nothing.
Well, almost nothing. He did have blackmail on Ishigawa now, and maybe he could get his boss to expense a pizza party for foiling that Militech raid?