I walked out into the garden. It was tiered, a few decimeters in height separated the grass slabs. Whatever engineered grass it was seemed fully content to grow along whatever surface it was adhered to, making for strange walls of manicured grass. ShinKyo didn't skimp on this park. It was lavish, as far as parks went. I had never seen an open park this well maintained. Most of the sprawl parks were concrete or other high durability solids, designed for basic meeting space or synthetic plant life. Real agriculture took time and infrastructure their didn't want to spend. A fairly well kept woman in her late years stood leaning on a cane in the middle of the large grass expanse before me. At the edges of the area bodyguards circled. They were indistinguishable in their riot gear, the masks and large build making it hard to differentiate. I then realized they were also wearing active camouflage ripplesuits. So I couldn't place genders even if I cared. But I didn't. I was more preoccupied by the woman. She was obviously my “Anon” contact. And this meant she was not concerned with recognition right now. Moreover, she picked a very popular park for this meeting. It was to make sure I was completely off balance. No comfort, no position to bargain, just at her mercy. It was brilliant, though I didn't appreciate being the trapped one.
Of course, were I truly trapped there would be no way I would walk in placidly, like I just did. On my way, I contacted Hyathi, who I’ve run with a few times, who could surveil for me while I traveled across the sprawl. Hyathi was good, maybe the best delver I’d ever worked with. They could pull off miracles in minutes, and seemed to always be tapped into city infrastructure. Honestly, I had never met them, it could be a team of people for all I knew. They always spoke like a collective, ungendered, and in terse phrases. If I were superstitious, I’d almost believe the stories that Hyathi was an AI, but I’m not that much of a sucker, contrary to the current situation.
So on the way over, I had Hyathi pull all the feeds from the area. I saw this woman arrive, my new “Anon” who I am pretty sure from digital biometrics and environmental readings was not comfortable with this, but I didn't know why. Yet. Hyathi was still running the DNA markers on Carolyn Aduu, to find out why she was involved in this. If they were going to use my sprawl name, then I was going to use hers. It was mostly to regain some bargaining power. Hyathi gave me great information on this meeting, but there was no way to know what this meeting was about.
I stepped up to her. I’d put my mask back on, a black vulpine motif with red contour lines running from the chin up. My now proper outfit was a tough gray tailcoat, with red trim, and a black pair of sleek trousers with concealed pockets. My boots, top of the line style with every traction option you could imagine, left virtually no imprint in the grass, despite my mass. I wasn’t fat, but I was tall, and stood 38 centimeters above my contact. The boots however worked to redistribute all of the force through modular connectors at the base of the shoes, allowing it to form and distribute against most surfaces, even adhering to some materials. I enjoyed being like a ghost as I approached her. I was still nothing like the active camo bruisers around me though, probably wielding percussion weapons too. She maintained the appearance of calmness, though biometrics showed elevation in heart rate. We were a meter apart now. The park empty save us, but no guarantee who was watching.
“Though I could call you Carol, I would prefer we stick to you being Anon and me being Canisaureus. If you cannot abide, then we should end this contract now.” Like it ought to have ended, I glowered under my mask. Voice modulation controlled my output, removing as many identifiable traits as I could.
“Certainly, Canisaureus. I wouldn’t want to be seen as careless.” The accented voice was surprising, but the rhyming of ‘careless’ echoed my name ‘Karlos’ enough to drive home the point. ‘You having information doesn’t remove our control.’ But I did make it more even.
“The purpose of this meeting is that you've passed the first trial, and we need your expertise for a more pressing matter.” She said, and I was still unable to place the accent. It was another thing that made this whole scenario weird. Accents were rare. There was enough common communication between sprawls that it just didn't vary much anymore. Wastelanders and fraggers would sometimes speak with some slang or accent, but that was rare. This was almost like a generational gap, like she hadn't kept up with the transitions. I made a note to try and place the speech with my recording later. “Consider it as an interview to ensure you had the skills needed. We are now hiring you to track down a different shipment, inside the Sprawl.”
She started walking north from the park, heading northwest. She used the cane to walk, favoring her left leg. I assumed it was part of the theater happening here. No way she wasn't rich enough to afford reconstruction if it were a legitimate injury. I stayed motionless as she started walking, as did the guards. Finally she turned and motioned me to follow. “Reactions like that are why we want you, specifically. I'm sure you've been studying the park too, based off the countermeasures we had on the park surveillance. However it was done was clever, we have no other traces of it, but we know it was accessed. It shows creativity. We'll talk more when we arrive elsewhere.”
She was still walking with the same limp, so even with her seemingly hurried pace, the rest of us were gliding slowly behind her. Guessing from the park design and schematics of the surroundings, I think we were walking towards a larger structure where transit vehicles were stored when out of service. Most of it was automated, so it was an idea place to have a private talk, or to dump a body. Hopefully it wasn't my body they planned to dump. The guards cycled positions, alternating where they were and how they crossed over. They were very tactical, and clearly well trained. I'd venture this was a group that went to the frags, so maybe that was her accent.
The stepped grass gave way to sloped greens, then to flat concrete with a few hedge boxes. Finally it spilled out into the normal digitally-augmented streets. Demarcation guides noted it was safe to cross, as no traffic was routing through here currently. Optimization probably ignored this path when possible, given the routes it connected. I tried pinging Hyathi for schematics of the lot and cameras, but I suspect they picked up that they were tagged. I had a small packed file, which decompressed into a basic map of a few possible buildings and some listening reverse shells. Looks like Hyathi planned ahead and didn't leave me high and dry, but didn't want to keep a line open while I was being monitored.
My Anon stepped up to a flat edge of the support structure. It was fused metal panels, but small notches in the side indicated a maintenance panel. She pressed her left hand to the deeper indentation. Faint light traces occurred in the panel, then the outline of a doorway appeared. The metal door recessed and slid into the wall. Interior lights flicked on, diodes flaring to life and casting a bluish light into the half-sterile room, which abruptly opened into a larger mechanical maw. A complex array of mechanical limbs lay motionless under the half-spilled light. As the first of the guards stepped in ahead of Anon, they fanned out into the open space. Lights bloomed in step with them, always casting illumination as they walked, giving more visibility to the immediate machines and giving hazy shape to hundreds more. I followed in, and we stepped between repair arms and diagnostic probes, around large vehicles in various states, to come to an empty working bay. The large open space was probably 12 meters on each side. The slab floor had divots for equipment, and permanent stains from.various mechanical materials and fluids, though none obviously blood.
Anon went glassy-eyed for a moment, likely giving or receiving commands. Once satisfied with the answer her vision returned tk the lrwn, and she manifest an identifier on the cloth on her arm. “I have critical and confidential information to share with you, and I want you to accept the connection, Canisaureus” Good. She was following protocols now.
“Accepted.” I said as I let my visual AugR interpreter run the sequence and establish connection. Now that the digital handshake was accomplished,. She spoke directly to my channel. She obviously had some good derms, because I saw no obvious uplinks, and yet she was in full language transmission mode without moving any of her body. Again, weird.
“Our client has selected you based off your resoursefulness and the unique importance of this mission. The previous assignment was a test, and an information gathering session. You are our preferred candidate, which is why we are offering you the job, with… certain incentives.”
“Selling my Sprawl name to people who I've crossed before, you mean.” her eyes narrowed, the only indicator that I was taking to her and no someone puppeting the connection.
“it is leverage and insurance, yes. You will be reimbursed well for your work, but there is equal consequence if you fail.”
“So what could possibly be so important you were going to such great lengths that this was a reasonable course of action in hiring a runner?”
She tapped her cane with her finger, and a blueprint file appeared in our channel. Upon opening it, I was greeted by schematics for something nearly incomprehensible. She guided me to a specific focal area, now more obviously a map of some topographical feature. Based off the data, I'd wager SK was bankrolling this whole thing, but obviously nothing provable. At first I thought it was some subsection of our sprawl, but I’d never seen those strange curving tubes before. They dominated much of the structures, like vines grown around a pillar in some greco-roman fantasy building. But they weren’t just growing, they were distributed. There was mathematical precision to the layout. As Anon guided the display, I finally grasped a sense of the scale, and yet again on this nightmarish day my stomach knotted itself.
Anon must have caught the change. “Ah. So now you recognise the schematics, do you? Now does it make sense why I didn’t establish the normal broker chain? I dare not let any third parties in on this plan. Even their neutrality may be questioned on this sort of job.”
I tried to remain calm. It took all my strength not to put my head in my hands while trying to wrap my brain around this task.
“Can you continue?” The Anon prodded, looking at me in the same dull fashion she did when I first arrived, like she hadn’t just proposed the impossible to me. “As you’ve not rejected the plan yet, I will continue.”
She zoomed more in, showing what now I realized was a long, fat building, maybe 20 meters square on the front, and nearly 100 meters long. Several tubes terminated in the top of it, and latticework cables fanned out from the terminators into various sockets on the building. Several faint cutouts on the building were then highlighted.
“What we are hiring you to do is to find a way to infiltrate those panels. Whether you use a surveillance drone, affix something to the normal couriers, or do it yourself is inconsequential to us. If you can get even a glimpse inside, we will reward you handsomely. And if you can get us a data uplink inside it… well, I assure you that credit will never be a problem for you again.”
That promise snapped me out of the fear. Unlimited credit? If it were SK on the role, it may only apply to this sprawl, but even that is a rather tall promise, and one not to be lightly dismissed. But this, this was the impossible. This was the stuff of rumors, whispered legend. Unsubstantiated lore told of runners who made it inside, finding abandoned cities of wealth, or computing clusters beyond comprehension. They described it like fantasy castles of old, protected by mechanical dragons, wielding biomechanical magic. But when faced with remarkably detailed blueprints, well, maybe it was time for me to try my hand as stealing treasure.
“Well…” I cleared my throat. “Well, if we’re going to break into an Arcology, you’ll need to give me a lot more than a blueprint.”
