The Freelancers

by OverHeart

Chapter 22 - Combing the Haul

Sheet Rock’s head pounded like drum, and painful jolts shot through her head as she started to stir from her alcohol induced stupor in a cold sweat. The muffled sound of distant hoofsteps on rotten wood echoed from the hallway, though she couldn’t tell whose they were.

The steps came closer and closer until it felt like they were right on top of her, she felt herself shake, presumably from how cold she felt but when a voice called her name she groggily opened her eyes.

“Hey there, you feeling okay?” Access asked, his voice barely that of a whisper.

She nodded gently, a small smile forming on her face. She felt herself being heaved onto his back and carried out to the living room where a stack of cases almost to the ceiling stood in the corner of the room, along with an amused looking Starry Night.

“Oh look, the flesh pony does have feelings!” Snowy mocked.

“Can it, tin can.” Access grumbled.

“I’ll have you know I’m made of Silicone and Manasteel, among other things of course.”

“Can you BOTH can it. My head is killing me!” Sheet Rock said through her gritted teeth.

Access set her down on her lounger which she sank into almost immediately, she attempted to shift around in an attempt to get comfortable but her limbs refused to obey her, whether because of the lack of sleep or how much she’d drank.

Hopefully they’d gloss over her antics the night prior and just move onto their next move, but she could feel the answer brewing in their minds already if the looks on their faces was anything to go by.

“So. Do you want to talk about your little drinking problem?” Access asked with the biggest smirk imaginable.

“And the fact you tried to make out with him, might I add.” Star added with a giggle.

“Oh come on, it was only a peck!” Sheet Rock protested between nauseous groans.

“Hey Star, did you know the only time Sheet ever speaks from the heart is when she’s drunk?”

“That so?” Star said mischievously.

The two shared a laugh at Sheet Rock’s expense who wished she could simply disappear between the folds of her lounger as she went beet red. After Access and Star got it out of their system, they apologized profusely.

Sheet Rock rolled her eyes. “What’s with the cases?”

“I figured if Star is gonna be our third, I thought we’d gear her up and take her our on a job. Something quick, simple and easy for her to get to grips with.”

“What about the haul? And the message, what if-”

Access cut Sheet Rock off with a harsh glare. “It can wait. We can’t afford to go in half-cocked, especially seeing as how green Star is.”

“Can we at least read the message? It might be important.” Sheet Rock pointed out with a whine.

Access shook his head, flopped down into his favorite, if a little ragged, seat and opened the message in his AR display, which simultaneously displayed it on their vidscreen. As expected the majority of the message header was corrupted, but the body of the message was surprisingly readable, and despite that, a large portion of the message was corrupted, much like the header was.

Greetings my little friends.

I hope things are well with you. I’ve been hard at work covering your tracks since you seem to breed trouble in your wake and as a result I’ve had to organize a few… incidents.

Good news is that it seems my creators have taken the bait, and the attention has been taken off of you for now at least, but there’s only so much I can do before my attempts at subversion are nullified.

There is talk about them deploying a certain kind of unit from a certain kind of agency, but I don’t know from where or who they’re referring to.

I know you broke into THAT network, yes you know which I mean, I could tell from your signatures. Don’t be reckless. I’m formulating a more… concrete plan which I’ll send your way when it’s completed, just lay low.

I implore you.

I need you.

I need both of you. Alive.

[END OF MESSAGE]

They stare at the screen blankly while Star looked wholly confused. If this really was X9 sending them a message, it seemed panicked, frightened almost. Multiple parts of the message didn’t make sense, as if this message was only a part of what it intended to send.

“Oh great. I bet this has something to do with the incidents being reported all over the place.” Sheet Rock groaned.

“I hate to admit it, but you might just be right. It probably isn’t being specific in case it’s being watched.” Access replied.

Star shook her head. “I don’t understand why you two are upset about it, but I’m guessing this has something to do with your earlier escapades?”

Access nodded. “Yeah it’s thanks to this thing that we’re in this mess.”

“What’s concerning is that it knows about the Darkspace job. How its managed this, I don’t know but we should assume it can reach far beyond its confines.” Sheet Rock added.

“Seems to me you should have thought that from the start.” Star grumbled.

Sheet Rock sighed. “In fairness there’s still a lot we don’t know. Maybe the latest haul can tell us something, but there’s a lot of it and we might be sorting through it for a while.”

Access plugged his deck into his neural interface and soon slumped over in his lounger. Their vidscreen jumped into life which started to display portions of the data that Access had swiped in quick succession, he sorted through each file as fast as his own mind could process it and discarded the junk files as they appeared, and left up only the most pertinent documents which quickly started to mount up in the corner of the screen.

While he did what he did best, a knock echoed from the door and a small voice called out to those inside.

“Access? Sheet? You in?”

“Scarlet?” Sheet Rock called from inside. “Yeah, doors open, let yourselves in.”

The door swung open to reveal the crimson maned mare, who rushed over to Sheet Rock and jumped into a surprising hug. Alongside her was the silver maned and forever gruff Bulwark, who gave Sheet Rock a muted smile and a simple hoof shake.

“Bulwark told me what happened, are you alright!” Scarlet wailed.

“We’re fine, Access got new limbs, everything’s good.” Sheet Rock said reassuringly.

Access summarily finished sorting the documents and there was a relatively large ‘pile’ by the time he was finished. Many of them had the logo of EQUI-TECH upon them along with another, one they’d never seen before.

The logo was that of a large, regal, golden crown, not unlike the one used by X9 as an avatar within the net.

“Come on Access, talk to me. Do we have anything worthwhile?” Star grumbled.

His voice crackled through a small speaker in his deck. “By the looks, yes, our mutual friend is mentioned multiple times in these documents and- ”

“And what?”

“This doesn’t look too good, take a look for yourself.”

Access displayed the document in question on the vidscreen for her to read, slowly and out loud, she read through the parts Access had highlighted for her.

Project Demiurge proceeds apace, nodes are being deployed in all major cities and are slated to go online in the next few months.As of now, nodes are functional in the Crystal Junction, Everfree Arcology, Rift City, Purist Encampment and now Upper Canterlot, with the nodes themselves processing hundreds of terabits of data at any one time.

These advancements in monitoring shall soon make it impossible for undesirables to hide among the law-abiding, they’ll be rooted out and only the worthy will remain where they deserve to be.

She froze on the spot and Scarlet stepped forward with a chip in her mouth, which was given to Sheet Rock who inspected it with cold indifference.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“It’s some data we managed to decrypt from the haul you got a while ago, remember?We could only recover the body of the documents though, no timestamps or headers.”

She did as she was told and slipped it into the chip-reader in Access’ deck which he quickly went to work sorting and displayed yet another document on the vidscreen, things seemed to be going from bad to worse.

Nodes G2-12-F and Z3-22-X are online in the corporate district and logistics district respectively, with X9-01-A handling central processing, however it has expressed a worrying level of self-awareness in recent days. Consider nerve-stapling the central core before we go live.

“What’s this nerve stapling it’s referring to?” Bulwark asked.

“It’s a procedure done to quell dissent in an individual by removing all sense of feeling and emotion, it’s used on organics might I add, not machines. It’s probably the most barbaric thing you can do to someone.” Star replied.

“So what does this mean?” Scarlet said with worry.

“I don’t know, and I don’t think I want to know.” Access called out as the vidscreen went dark.

He sat up in his lounger with a worried frown and ejected the chip from his deck. Everyone fell silent and the atmosphere felt thick and heavy with a whirlwind of differing thoughts and emotions, but Access soon broke the silence with a proclamation.

“From what other information I managed to glean, it means that we’ve been watched for a good amount of time now, and anything we’ve been doing has likely been stored for later use.” Access continued.

“This might explain why we’ve been getting so many more displaced ponies down here in recent months. Why keep dissenters around when you can just point to something they said once and use it to ruin them?” Sheet Rock added.

“Course this means anyone with a record now or in the future can kiss any chances of a job goodbye. The sprawl and similar districts are already heaving with ponies, this will make it ten times worse!” Scarlet added.

“No question about that. I’ve still got quite a bit to sort through so expect more information as and when.” Access remarked.

Comments

[mariopepper]

Very good. I would rather say awesome! Unfortunately I have serious problems in writing... novel writing, reaction paper and even simple essays.. I suppose I woulnd't even acomplish my school essays without essaysupply help so this was my solution so far..

[OverHeart]

10475023

Glad you're enjoying it so far, I really appreciate it.