517 Teeth and Claws

Maiko and Wakako appeared inside the digital space that was used as a launching program for their netrunners. It was supposed to keep them safe from direct searches and should have stopped any foreign programs or signals from getting anywhere close to their own servers.

It took them a few seconds to realize they couldn't see the man that had asked for a meeting. They sure could feel his presence nearby, though. As one, both women looked 'up' towards where they thought he was and saw a muscular man wearing a formfitting and mostly white bodysuit. It had gold accents on the arms, legs, and shoulders, and his hair was cropped short on the sides and back with a slightly wavy mass on top of his head.

To their surprise, he slowly drifted around in the air and his finger was poking things, almost lazily, then he rotated his body to look 'down' at them. The smile on his face grew at seeing them and he flew down to land a respectful distance away from them.

“Greetings and salutations, Lady Okada, Miss Maeda.” He said and bowed at the waist while also keeping his eyes on them, like all smart opponents did. “My name is Atlas.”

Maiko snorted and barely stopped herself from laughing at the obviously fake name.

Atlas winked at her and stood up straight. “Thank you for agreeing to meet with me.”

“I believe you left me with little choice.” Wakako said. “My netrunner refused to ever return here.”

Atlas looked surprised for a moment and then he sighed. “Was it removing her cloak or stopping her from logging out that scared her so much?”

“Logging out.” Maiko answered.

“She will be moved to another business to let her recover.” Wakako said, dismissively.

“I apologize for costing you an asset.” Atlas said and squinted his eyes at her, then he smiled. “Would you like me to remove the degradation program that's slowly corroding your artificial synapses as compensation?”

“YOU DARE ATTACK...” Maiko started to yell as she drew her gun that represented an attack program.

Atlas pointed at her and her mouth disappeared. A flick of his fingers later, all of her armor, weapons, and gear dissolved into digital bits and faded away. Both women stared at him in shock, because he shouldn't have been able to run any executables on their own servers or destroyed their own defenses.

“The program is years old and has done quite a lot of damage already.” Atlas said and looked at Wakako. “With all the medical advancements available, do you really believe that the soreness you feel is from old age?”

The mouthless Maiko turned to stare at the old woman beside her. Her arms gestured as she tried to convey disconnecting and escaping the powerful netrunner at the old woman, who ignored her.

“Yes, it has always seemed rational.” Wakako admitted. “What could I do? I tried to fix it with grafts, only for it to not make any difference.”

“Artificial grafts?” Atlas asked and she nodded. “Then you've been smart to do that as often as you have. Adding more artificial nerves for it to corrupt has slowed the overall degradation down to a crawl and probably saved you from an early death.”

Wakako thought about that and nodded. “Can you really remove it?”

Atlas gave her a thoughtful look, then formed something in his hand. It almost looked like a cross between a needle and a plunger and he opened his hand and the thing floated over to Wakako, as if there was no set value to the gravity inside the program.

“You can do it yourself.” Atlas said and crossed his arms to prove he wasn't going to do anything else, like point at her or flick his fingers in her direction.

Wakako stared at the odd device and ran several programs on it, including virus detectors and a few others that were proprietary for the Tyger Claws and her specifically. Nothing came up and she moved to hold it up to her arm, as if injecting herself. She paused the action as she looked at his face to see if he reacted to her movements, only he stayed standing there with a smile on his face.

Maiko waved her hands in a clear no gesture and Wakako again ignored her as she remembered the woman's words to her before. Atlas was showing her respect and she should show him respect in return. So, she shoved the device into her arm and pushed the plunger.

Nothing happened for a moment, then a burning pain covered Wakako from her head to her toes and she screamed. She dropped to her knees as it felt like her nerves were being ripped apart and torn out by the roots.

Atlas was suddenly there on his knees in front of her and placed a gentle hand on hers that had been locked around the device to hold it in place. “Do not fight it, Lady Okada. Let the purge and extraction program do its work. The pain will ease, I promise.”

For some reason, she believed him and decided to stop her own viral suppressants and let the foreign program run rampant. The pain actually did ease and she felt a tingling start at her fingertips and her toes and start to work its way up her arms and legs. As it did, the plunger started to rise on its own and a sickly yellow liquid filled the device.

Maiko stood there and stared at them both and kept gesturing for the old woman to do something. Wakako kept ignoring her as the plunger finished fully extending and the tingling stopped. She felt energy fill her and her body shook as the various implants she had to monitor and maintain her health, reported that everything was fine and she no longer needed her medicomp to dispense anti-rejection drugs for her extensive nerve damage.

“How do you feel?” Atlas asked and pulled the device off of her arm. He didn't try to take it from her, though. He patted her arm and pointed to the side of the device. On it was the digital signature of the culprit. It was the name of a man she had disposed of years ago and she mentally thanked her younger self for being smart and removing him before he removed her.

“I am well, Atlas.” Wakako said and was surprised when he stood and held a hand down to help her stand. She accepted it and he eased her to her feet. Unlike every other time that happened, even in a digital landscape, she felt no twinges of pain or long settled aches.

“I'm glad.” Atlas said and let her hand go, then he stepped five steps back to a respectable distance and waved a hand at Maiko, whom was released from whatever held her back and her mouth reformed on her face.

“Lady Okada!” Maiko gasped and lunged for her to check her over.

Wakako held in her laugh at her subordinate acting like that. Maiko knew full well how strict the old woman was and that she would put a hit out on her own people if it would set an example for others to never stepping out of line or to go against her orders or commands.

“Enough.” Wakako said and Maiko stopped fussing over her and stepped back. “Atlas, what business do you think I can help you with?”

Altas formed a document and floated it over to her. All three of them knew it was a datapacket and Maiko stepped in front of her to intercept it and caught it. Her eyes widened as it unpacked and she found out what Atlas wanted from them.

“Step back.” Wakako commanded, her voice hard. She didn't shout or rant, which kind of made it more effective.

Maiko hopped backwards as if she had been scalded by hot water and bowed at the waist. “My apologies, Lady Okado. I only thought to protect you...”

“Leave.” Wakako ordered with narrowed eyes. “Now.”

Maiko opened her mouth to defend herself and Atlas was instantly beside her and poked her forehead. Her digital avatar blew apart and her signal disappeared. Wakako gave him a single raised eyebrow and he gave her another deep bow.

“She was only hurting herself as she kept defending her actions after you ordered her to leave.” Atlas answered her unasked question.

“Can you teach me how to do that?” Wakako asked. “Whatever that was, it was quite effective and much faster than a normal disconnect signal.”

Atlas smiled at her and formed another document. “I'm sure we can come to a mutually beneficial agreement after you look at this and we start negotiating.”

Wakako held a hand out for his information packet and absorbed it. She saw what it was and smiled. “I am sure we can, too.”

*

Maiko gasped and her entire body jerked as she was forcibly ejected from the VR environment. She sat up and pulled out the connection, then she shoved the cord back into her neck port and nothing happened. There was no option to reconnect and all she could see was a timer on her HUD that was counting down from 60 minutes.

She yanked out the cord and walked over to the bank of monitors at the workstation and shoved the man monitoring the servers out of the way. She typed in a few commands and found that she couldn't reset her banishment or log back in, not even under another identity.

“How did he do that?” Maiko asked and walked away from the workstation and back over to where the old woman was logged in. She saw the smile on her face and wondered what else this new netrunner named Atlas was going to do to surprise them.

*

David Martinez laid in his bed and wondered what the hell was going on with his life. It was a huge mess and he wasn't sure what to do with it, especially after his mother had caught him at Doc's place and then pounded his face in to teach him about never committing another crime ever again. She wanted a better life for him than that.

After she was arrested, David thought he was in the clear and could go back to doing whatever he wanted, just like he always dreamed about. He hated school, he hated having to interact with corpo brats like Tanaka, and he really hated that he was poor and was looked down at by everyone.

Since he was only aware of his own social circle, he only had a very limited view of what was actually going on around him. It wasn't that he was poor, it was that he was trying to become a corpo without a corporation's backing. That was an enormous struggle on its own, besides the social stigma of becoming the very thing street kids like him made fun of.

Now David was thinking about what his life was going to be like from now on. Somehow, someway, his mother had gotten out of jail, without needing bail or even a proper lawyer, and she was actually happy.

The smile on her face hadn't dimmed at all as she called in being sick for the next two weeks at her job, then she cashed in all her owed sick time, vacation time, and confirmed the deposit in her account before she happily told her shift supervisor to go fuck himself and quit. Her two week notice was already covered because she called in sick for them, and that was that.

David had to retreat to his room after Gloria started singing and dancing around their tiny apartment. What had happened to make her so happy? Wasn't she facing a court case? Jail time? Fines for scavenging?

Music started playing again and David buried his head under his pillow to try and muffle it. It wasn't because it was bad music, not at all. It was because his mother danced so... so... he couldn't even think about her hips gyrating or her breasts bouncing like that! Where was her shame? She was the mother of a teenager and should not be acting like a teenager herself. It was too weird for him to take.

David was grounded, so he wasn't allowed to retreat into his cyberdeck, either. He had to stay in the real world for the rest of the week, except while at school, and he felt like he was dying. He needed his fix and he needed another BD high before he started freaking out about it. Even a normal one would be good enough to tide him over.

He had just decided that he would have to wait for his mom to go to sleep to get some peace and quiet when he had the brilliant idea to sneak out and hit up one of the vendors near Jig-Jig street. They were always good for a mid-class BD and he did have a few spare eddies squirrelled away for just such an occasion.

*

I left a few false trails in the net after leaving the meeting with Wakako, whom adored my little hacker tweaks. She really got off on showing her power in subtle ways and making people jack out of VR to wait to visit her again? It was priceless to her.

Needless to say, I received much more information than I actually thought I would get. I even had the identity of the netrunner that had made the data packets for my classmate Tanaka. Wakako offered me the idiot's head as payment for showing her how stupid the guy was for not cleaning up after himself. Just like David has said, the guy wasn't even trying to hide that it was him that did it.

I humbly told her to deal with that as she saw fit, as was her right, and I retreated from the net safely. I added all the new evidence to the file folder I had and sent copies of it to Victor Vektor, which was a huge amount of both circumstantial and physical evidence. All we needed was the footage from the armored car's own security cameras and we would have a lock on the whole case.

At least, I hoped we would. Since there was no way to get that footage without it being declared illegal, Victor's lawyer had to subpoena the defense council for it, which involved a lot of red tape and would clue them into the fact we knew the car had cameras and they might just hint to their client to wipe it.

We actually hoped they would, because then we could subpoena the security company for the backup footage and would get the clean and hopefully unedited version. I left a note with Vic stating that if we agreed to not hold the armored car company at fault or added them into the civil lawsuit, since it was human error and not their system or company, we might get them to sneak us a copy of the footage anyway.

With that taken care of, I mentally disconnected from my cyberdeck and stayed laying there on the chair. It was surprisingly comfortable and it was almost like I was floating on a raft on the water. I checked the time and it was nearing midnight, so I hit the button to sit the chair back up to the upright position and stood, stretched, and went over to my bed.

I didn't bother trying to take off the uniform, since magic would allow me to clean myself and refresh the suit in the morning. With luck, neither Syn nor Gloria would ever know that it wasn't the other nurse that had washed me and prepared the suit for me.

I climbed on top and laid there, my mind drifting almost immediately. It had been a really long day and I had gotten so much done that it wasn't funny. I laughed anyway, because I realized I had done two important things today. I had Gloria's spectacular ass ride me and then saved that ass from going to prison. All in all, it was a good day and everything I went through had been worth it.

*

Wakako felt a spark of true happiness as she used a few of the hacks Atlas had shown her to humiliate and humble the idiot that had brought the Tyger Claws to the powerful netrunner's attention. It was attention she would have avoided if given the choice; but, now that she had none and had his attention, she was not going to deny the gift the delightful young man had given to her.

When she had woken up from their meeting, she felt a decade younger. All of her aches and pains were gone and not just reduced, like she suspected they would be. She could clasp her hands together and not hear the cracks of her arthritis or felt shooting pains in her knuckles or her knees when she knelt to pray. In her eyes, he had given her more than she could have ever wished for.

“You will go to the police and admit what you did to help cover up the crime the Tanaka brat caused.” Wakako ordered and the man nodded several times and whimpered. “However, if you admit to more than that or drag your fellow gang members down with you...” She said in a deadly voice and stepped on his hand. “...you will not live long enough to enjoy the safety of prison.”

“I understand!” The man shouted and tried to not cry out in pain when she moved her foot.

“You may go.” Wakako said in dismissal and the little man fled from her sight. She was really going to enjoy her life from now on, thanks to Atlas.