[i]Mamushi - All Sorts of Wired[/i]
[hr]

"Up top."

Mamushi raised a hand from the counter and started unzipping his duffel. Fuck his meds; at this point, it sure wasn't going to be a stupid chocolate pretzel that killed him. Besides, the Eraser had called him funny. If that didn't twitch the corners of his metal mouth, Kim K's comment on his gunplay sure did. Not that she wasn't all sorts of right (the one time he'd surreptitiously fired a shotgun at a range it had nearly dislocated his shoulder), but Mamushi was much more adept at shooting his mouth off than anything larger than a .22.

"And I'd like to see your ass--"

[I]Period?[/I]

Shut up, hormones.

Too busy mentally rolling his eyes to finish the comment, he was already splitting his attention between Quinn and his duffell. He largely ignored the Enforcer as he went around doing what he did best--setting up shop. The laptop hauled out of the bag was heavier than most babies, about as portable as your average Javelin missile launcher. Mamushi didn't need the pep talk--the part of him that wasn't being sedated out of panic-attack range was already focused on getting back up and running, because without information they would die.

[i]Period.[/i]

Shut [i]up[/i], brain.

It was simple fact. They'd already functionally surrendered their infrastructure. Like playing chess against yourself, Mamushi was already walking through the dozen-and-a-half ways he would have shut down their little operation, and it always began with using this time to cut off resources. Assuming they'd already survived the hit-men, the natural next step was to regroup and expose the plot--if they weren't the ones slinging drugs, it meant one of two things. Either someone else had moseyed in quietly and was setting them up, or they were being set up from the inside. Whichever option it was, an intelligent enemy would cut off avenues of re-entry into the city. Hit-men were good for removing the old guard but burning the tangentials--the club owners, the salarymen, the  police on the take--was bad business. It meant starting from scratch and killing some good will doing it, so they wouldn't. Main branch would roll in as management doing a restructure, but that would take time. Time they really needed.

Which meant they had a window before everyone in the whole damn city knew they were persona non grata and sold them out for a pat on the head. Ariella's death--wait, [I]Ariella's death?[/I] He'd heard it right, straight from the Anita Pascal's well-televised lips (she was actually pretty boring, as far as celebrities went--an Adderall prescription in her son's name, but nothing interesting). If the old man was out of the picture, that...changed things. Not enough to stop him moving, leaning over the counter for a power-outlet as he set himself up on the faux-marble counter of the kitchen. 

“The king is dead.” Mamushi found himself muttering wryly around a cigarette he only half-remembered lighting, breathing it in and ignoring the slight shake to his hand. Now was [i]not[/i] the time to be panicking. “Long live the king.”

Safehouses needed power. If he was running their sweeps, how long would it be before he cross-referenced prior safe-house locations with recent local spikes in power consumption? How long would it be before someone [i]else[/i] did?

“They haven’t found us yet, which means they either aren’t aware of this safehouse or don’t have the personnel to send to it. Worst case scenario it’s the latter, this wouldn’t be one of the ones they check first, which gives us some time until they start. If I was running the sweep, we might have a day before I could get a fix on cell-data or utilities spikes, especially this far below ground. As it stands, best guesstimate is two, maybe three if we get the cars inside where nobody’s going to spot ‘em.” Business talk. He didn’t look up from his laptop, rummaging around in the duffel to find the cellular model he had listed anonymously. Times like this you could almost tell he was a professional, brain spinning a mile a minute.

“No chance of ghosting--any way out of the city’s got eyes on it unless they’re total fuck-ups. We got a real short margin of error, ladies and gents, and not much time before they see how bad their goons done goofed and the real hunt is on. Infrastructure is the foundation, so they’ll shoot for it first. They’d need someone local to get into the utilities and traffic intranet, so they’ll have on-site operations--if I can get in first, I might be able to piggyback their hack and find it, but I can’t do that from under two stories of fucking concrete.”

Mamushi’s eyes finally flicked up. He was breathing hard--he hated feeling this way. Was he right? Was he wrong? Would they tell him to shut the fuck up and leave field work to field ops? It all seemed so clear to him, but maybe--

Enough. No time to be paranoid.

“If you want me going toe-to-toe with whatever Main Branch digital looks like, I can’t do it here. I need power, I need internet, and I need someone who can secure it all for me. You give me that, I can give you eyes and ears, and maybe a target.”

“Or I can fuck off and you run this your way. Y’know. Either or.”

...godammit, brain.