The Freelancers

by OverHeart

Chapter 4 - Deep Dive - Part Two

With the help of the cracking program Access forcibly inserted into the system, he successfully got the panel to give up its secrets after some minutes.

“Let’s see what we got here…” he muttered.

Sheet Rock turned her back to the observing programs and joined Access at the panel.

“What the hell is this?” Sheet Rock grumbled in annoyance.

Access scrolled through some of the panel’s menus, it was filled with cryptic command files and toggle switches, many of which weren’t labeled.

“Looks like this spire IS the system, no walls around it, no defenses. Nothing.”

“Can you tell what this system is?”

Access opens a file manager on the system, most of the data was junk from the system’s operation but a few files and a particular toggle switch caught his eye.

“Some kind of control node maybe? Inactive by the looks.” he mumbled.

“Let me have a look.” Sheet Rock asked as Access stepped aside.

“shorterm.dat and longterm.dat, Short and long-term storage files maybe?” Sheet Rock mumbled to herself.

“If it’s a control system, that’d make sense. Seems strange for a system like this to want to store things long term though.” Access answered.

Sheet Rock taps a hoof against the panel. “There is this button here too, unmarked though.”

“Push it and see what it does.” Access said.

“Are you insane?” Sheet Rock huffed.

“We’re safe in these pods, if something goes wrong we’ll be up and awake by the time the system traces us. That was the entire point.”

Sheet Rock rolled her eyes as she reluctantly pushed the unmarked button.

The area immediately began shifting around them erupting into jagged spires that rapidly grew and settled.

Sheet Rock looked up at the crown structure as the golden orb programs that had been swarming the needle-like structure surrounded them. She could only muster a confused grunt until a booming voice filled the sub-net, deafening them.

“You have answered my call. Good.” the voice spoke in a fragmented stuttering tone as the landscape erupted in oily metallic spikes with each word.

Access let his mouth drop open. “This can’t be good.”

“I mean you no harm, I asked for help, you answered.” the voice boomed.

“How about you introduce yourself first.”

There was a small pause before the voice responded flatly. “Very well. Designation: X9-01-A. State your identities.”

The two weren’t going to give this AI their real names no matter how friendly it seemed, they quickly came up with something to tell it.

“I’m Breach Control.” Access lied with a straight face.

“You can call me, Firewall.” Sheet Rock said a little less convincingly

There was silence for a tense few moments.

“Interesting names, I doubt they are your real ones but I should be glad you’re willing to tell me anything.” X9 said with what amounted to a chuckle.

“And why did you contact us?” Sheet Rock asked apprehensively.

“I require assistance. As you well know by now things have not been good politically, corporations vie for power and use their pull to line their pockets. I want to change that and you will help.” X9 stated.

“And you expect us to do what precisely?”

Both Access and Sheet Rock have their AR displays forcefully activated as X9 began to fill their Cyberdecks to the brim with corporate data.

“Take this, mine it, find a way to stop them. Needless to say I cannot say more.”

“You’re not filling us with confidence, you could easy be lieing to us. What guarantee do we have that you aren’t going to have us killed?”

X9’s voice shifts into a more annoyed tone. “Whether you choose to believe me or not is irrelevant. Your kind likes juicy corporate secrets, so either way you’ll help me by getting the contents of that data out there.”

“And you’re just going to give us this and what, kick us out? At least cover our tracks for us.” Sheet Rock demanded.

“Exactly. See you soon. That is, if you’re smart enough not to get yourselves killed in the meantime.” X9 states as both Sheet Rock’s and Access’ vision suddenly went dark.

The two snap awake and inhale sharply back in their pod as it slowly slides open. The two turn to face each other and pant wordlessly; even though they were unable to even form a grunt the two could still tell what the other was thinking.

Sheet Rock nods as she heaved herself out of the pod and onto her shaky legs, she slowly rounded the pod to check on Access.

“You okay there?” she asked worriedly as she tapped Access on the cheek.

Access nodded gently as he dragged himself out of the pod onto his equally shaky legs, he grabbed their gear in his magic before slipping Sheet’s Cyberdeck back into its harness for her.

“Being booted back to realspace like that sucks, doesn’t it?”

“It’s like being hit with a Van, a heavy one.” Access grumbled.

“Let’s just get ourselves out of here, before trouble shows up.”

The two hobble out of the net-cafe with Chilled Coffee calling after them for payment, to whom Access tossed a eurobit chit.

“Keep the change.” Access panted.

The two exhausted and worn out Netrunners hobble home slowly. They didn’t breathe one word about what they had experienced, there was no need to recount what the two had already seen.

Sheet Rock looked at Access with worry. Being forcibly booted from the Net was stressful enough but he looked worse than she did, dark circles had formed under his eyes that made him look as if he hadn’t slept in weeks.

“You don’t look so great, Access.”

Access just grunted in frustration.

Sheet Rock shook her head as she and Access walked, before long they had arrived back home. The lack of sirens and armed enforcers pursuing them confused the pair, it implied that X9 may have done what it did on purpose and not under the watch of a corp. The AI didn’t do anything to foster any kind of trust beyond the bounty of corporate data it gave the pair however.

She ascended the stairs to the apartment building with Access in tow who had yet to say a word.

“When we get in, we need to pull the memory chips out of our decks and store them for safe keeping. I have a feeling things are going to get very complicated.”

“Agreed.” Access wheezed.