“你想要一杯茶嗎?”

Laine nodded her head pointing toward the display. Silently watching the calloused hands of the tea vendor lift a battered kettle. An antiquated oddity amongst the various brands of instant-machines. A styrofoam cup was placed on the counter steam drifted upward into the morning air. Encapsulated within her hand, the tactile sensors flared up her augment sending a facsimile of warmth to processed within the brain.

She made her way out through the alleyway that the vendor was tucked into, and crossed South Horizon Drive towards Aberdeen Harbor. The water hidden beyond the massive nest of rising towers each connected with rising glass bridges. The buildings rising every upward to meet growing populations demands. A large garbage truck lumbered along its interior already filled with the early morning run. A group of young woman dressed in identical business attire walked on, by talking amongst themselves in Cantonese. On their way no doubt to catch one of the early buses to the mainland to get to work.

The water’s edge came quickly passed the towers. A small strip of sand and loose gravel that quickly faded away into the blue-green of the harbor. Laine sat down on this small barrier looking out over the water towards Pok Liu Chau, and Korea itself somewhere beyond that; grey clouds hanging on the horizon heavy with promises of rain. Cupping her tea in both hands, she drank, the warm bitterness of the green tea filling her senses. It was the quiet probably that she appreciated most. The roar of the city melted away, leaving only the wind and the far off sounds of the men out on their sampans.The process having slowly transmuted into her morning ritual over the past five years.

“Guess this is the last time then” She mused to herself, her own voice jarringly loud amongst the silence. She crushed the now empty cup in her hand, the styrofoam folding inward easily against the pressure of the robotic joints into a small and misshapen ball. With an easy throw, she chucked the ball into the waters beyond watching it for a moment, bobbing up and down in the water; a flash of white against the blue-green.

She rose, brushing the sand off of her the black of her pants legs. Following the same path from before, she turned to the left as she hit the road. Following it as it curved away from the housing developments and the commercial sector, hugging the coast in a south easterly direction. Here the design of the towering buildings became less extravagant and more utilitarian in their design. Their hard right angles and concrete frames arising like a mesa from the ground. An old sign covered in rust still protruded along the shoulder of the road, the faded letters reading: Emergency Redistribution Housing.

Subconsciously, as she crossed the invisible boundary where one world had ended and other began, Laine had turned on. Submerging herself fully into the surroundings of the area, taking in every little sign of life and movement. The sidewalk was stained with vomit and the air tinged with smoke. The remnants of a cardboard bed lay propped against one of the buildings. Up the street, a stray cat plodded across the cracked asphalt, matted hair clinging to its slender frame. It stopped and looked at Laine, contemplating her for a moment then sprinting into a nearby alleyway.

She stopped in front of one of the buildings that stretch far into the sky. Paint above the door frame had chipped away leaving only two partially completed words: de ar mt sto e. The exterior was covered in a mixture of grim and graffiti advertising local gangs. Empty voids cut into the walls stood where windows may once have been. Its tall frame blocking out the morning sun and casting the exterior out front in shadow, intensifying the coolness in the air as the breeze began to crescendo with the approaching storm. From a backpocket she pulled out a crumpled blue-red box labeled Беломорканал. Pulling one of the cigarettes from the box, she fished around in her other pocket for a lighter.

Five minutes later, a off-white BYD van came down the street. Its box shape moving with a surprising level of grace as the electric engine quietly purred. Laine looked up, as she flicked the husk of her cigarette to the ground, grinding it into the sidewalk with a black boot heel. The van was unmarked, but she knew it as one of Loingsech's fleet of vehicles. It carried the rest of her team, ferrying them from the opulent five star extravagance that was the Kinmokusei Hotel. Laine didn't trust them enough to make their way alone. Trust was something you earned, and that process took much longer than the two days they had.

As the van came to a stop, her posture straightened as she pulled herself up to her full height. Crossing her arms she waited as the automatic doors slid open.

It was a slow morning for Peter so far. He had arisen from his luxury bed at four this morning, deciding that he couldn’t sleep any longer. Curiosity had gotten the better of him. He was used to corporations hiring him, then telling him half of the story. This though, this was different indeed. Peter knew nothing. Nothing at all. He had attempted to try and use his contacts within Loingsech to discover anything about what was going on. Nothing. No one knew anything. Or at the very least they were stonewalling him.

Still, he had gotten two free nights in this place: Kinmokusei. This wasn’t his first stay here. He had been here several times, always on business however. This was one of those high-end luxury places where it was really easy to hide a murder or two. It gave off the illusion of glitz and glamour with the casino and the whole seven-star luxury vibe, but, its clientele fell more on the seedy side. At least most people wore suits around here. Just because you disrespected the law doesn’t mean you can’t make an effort to look presentable.

Peter had spent most of the morning getting prepared. He had three hours until he needed to be in the lobby and that was more than enough time to make sure he was all dressed, packed, and ready to go. He took the time to take a shower before leaving. Unlike most it wasn’t a cold shower. That would just make him uncomfortable for the rest of the day. He had never seen the appeal of cold showers. He had by this point in his life assumed that people took them to wipe away the sins off their body. More symbolic than practical. Peter preferred his hot showers, letting the heat moisturise his skin. He didn’t think in the shower like most people either. He just got in, washed and out.

Peter spent more time on his hair than he did with the shower. Making sure it was parted correctly and not a single hair was out of place. Years of wearing his hair like this had forced it to stay in position. Getting dressed was a simple affair; blue suit with black leather shoes and a special white, blue and orange stripped bowtie to top it all off. He had bought others. His suitcase had an assortment of bowties along with his black suit and his pistol. His datapad was currently on the side of the bed. He had spent most of the night reading different files of his before finally nodding off. He picked up his pad and suitcase and took one last look of the room. Its colours were nice, but it was now time to leave.

It was 6.45 in the morning when Peter arrived in the lobby. He had guessed everyone else who had been selected for this secretive job would also be assembling here. Peter didn’t really want to draw any early attention to himself, so he decided to go sit in the corner on a velvet sofa while reading his datapad, occasionally looking up from his pad to scan the room and its people. It wouldn’t be long until it was time for action.

Slowly 7am rocked around and he could finally see what was going on. A group was getting ushered into a van, clearly the group he was looking for. Before the door would close, Peter would job up to it and get inside. He wouldn’t really say much of a word, just a nod before sitting down and getting ready to go. He would spend the journey staring at his datapad, reading an article on the Loingsech Corporation.

It didn’t take long for the van to reach its destination. Once the van arrived it opened its door and Peter climbed out, looking around the surroundings that they had been taken to. Not exactly the same as the place they had left originally. “Such a nice place you got…” He said as he looked around and his eyes laid on the cybernetic woman infront of him. “Miss???.....” He carried on, extending his hand out and trying to get the towering woman to give her name.

The last two days could have been a dream for her, but Mei was too busy preoccupying herself with preparations to relax. For one, this job was a corporate one, and that meant risks for her that could end her career as a star hacker, and the joyride her life had been, so she had been making sure that every single program was without bug or flaw. Her security must be air tight, or an errant data package would give away the game. Any slip up on her part could cost her both her paycheck and her future, and either of those outcomes were unconscionable. Not to mention, any given person in the hotel might be a corporate spy, or worse, a competitor looking to screw the job, which meant she hadn't been able to even leave her room in the past forty-eight hours she had been booked in. Not only could the enemy gather data on her, but if they had gotten to her precious hardware, untold damage could have been wrought. No, better to stay sealed away, and order food, than to risk it all for silly games. After all, there was a far grater game to be played.

Two, she had been digging into who else might have been tapped for this job. Obviously, she would not be a lone, but as Loingsech had been less than forthcoming with details about the job at all, even to bolster success, she had gone through her own channels to find anything out. Even then, information had been sparse. She had a list of names and images to fit them, but beyond that, nothing. No objective, no expected time of completion, not even her pay. Above all else, this had infuriated her.

So, third, she had an ulterior motive. She was going to datamine the ever-living hell out of Loingsech the second she was capable of doing so. Info insurance to protect her hide after a blackout job only seemed prudent after all, and if no one else on this team was concerned, she might be able to keep them alive at the end as well. Paranoia, sure, but she had survived on the 'Net this long through over-protection and she was not about to let that slip now. And there was no such thing as overprotective, really, when it came to corporate jobs. She knew from her past two experiences that her security would be tested both flagrantly and subtly as soon as the job was done, if not before. And reports from her friends in the Sun On Yee and online world that blackout jobs like this tended to end with a healthy round of 去除松散的一端, so she had reason to be concerned.

All in all, she was excited, bordering on ecstatic, by this job. The danger, challenge, and the tackling of the unknown were refreshing in a life that had, for the past several months, been nothing but a slog of boring programming jobs and no danger at all aside from what had built up over the course of her career. The anticipation of such an event had kept her up all night, and at seven, she found herself floating across the lobby and into the beckoning van with a high dose of endorphins and low inhibitions even for her. She had composed herself enough the dress and back, but judging by the others, she was the odd one out. She had adorned herself in her usual jewelry, taking special care to keep her silver dragon bracelet hidden by the multitude of brightly coloured scarves and light-cloth ribbons that shimmered with colours. Her hair was on, and her mood had triggered the colours to run and shine between amber and green in cascading waves. She busied herself trolling the 'Net for information on the car ride in the van, however, and avoided, through conscious effort, trying to talk to anyone until the briefing on the job finally happened. She was sure the others had noticed that she was on edge, but she doubted most of them realised that it was mostly avoiding stepping on toes or giving away the game and not just typical nervousness she was showing.

In the meantime, to keep herself occupied, she tried once more in vain to dig up any information. Loingsech had obviously bottled the van tight, as she wasn't having any luck tapping into their systems at all, and at this point, she admitted to herself, the likelihood of drawing attention to herself outweighed the chance of any sort of useful information, so she sat back with a resigned sigh and watched the rest of the crew with apprehension, and the slight hope that any of them knew what they might be in for.

Jon drummed his fingers on the seat absently, servos whirring as he did so. He didn't like this business with the van - since he'd started doing freelance work, he'd rather come to enjoy the freedom of movement and self-determination that it offered. Better than being packaged into a car by a megacorp and shipped off to where you were needed like a commodity. He dug his fingers into the seat, leaving shallow divets as the metal gave way beneath him. At least the accommodations they'd been provided were nice - he was getting tired of sleeping in shitty motels and gang hideouts, though it had been hard to sleep on a bed so soft. Not even for reasons of comfort, he was just so heavy he kept sinking into it.

He glanced up and for the umpteenth time, a target appeared in place over the head of the small, garishly dressed Chinese girl. "Neural adapter detected," the thin metallic voice in his head whispered flatly. "Recommend severance at the base of the - " Jon grimaced and shook his head, and the digital display vanished. Whichever Maginot doctor had come up with that feature of the augments that had replaced half his body really hadn't considered how annoying it would be.

Lacking anything better to do, he checked his email. Emily still hadn't gotten back to him with the information he'd asked for - dossiers on his teammates, news on Loingsech, any word on the black market about people being hired to take out some girl - but he'd known from the start that it was a big ask, and that she was busy anyway. He resolved to call her later, if he got a moment. A thin, high-pitched alarm exploded into his head, causing him to wince. Jon reached into his pocket, pulled out the small white bottle, shook two pills into his hand and popped them into his mouth.

The van arrived not long after that. Jon stepped out of the van cautiously, scanning the horizon for a sign of trouble as was his custom. All he saw was the woman standing there waiting for him, augmented to all hell and grinding a cigarette beneath her heel, whom the old man immediately started trying to glad hand. Jon remained silent for his part and stayed in the back of the group, looking up at the massive woman and trying not to let anything show on his face. She had brought them - she could speak first.

“Reservations for Akina Izuna?”
“Yes. I’d like to check in.”

Akina Izuna would check in, but in the next three days, the figure that would leave the Kinmokusei would be someone entirely different. To Izuna, this whole ordeal was something of a dream vacation, but in the back of her mind, she knew she had to keep any advantage she could, and that meant keeping herself as anonymous as possible despite what Loingsech might already know. Alongside that, the girl had no idea who she would be working with, but she had no doubt they would most certainly be of an unsavory variety. While she trusted in her abilities to keep her cover, Izuna feared betrayal more than those who had been in her business longer than her. She put up a pretty good facade, though. To any patron of the fine Kinmokusei, Izuna was a starstruck sort, ceaselessly entertained by the inner workings of the hotel’s fine casino. The naive young girl played, drank, and made merry for the entirety of her stay.

What happened upon the Kinmokusei’s main floors differed greatly from what occurred within Izuna’s room, though. Couches and end tables had been covered in papers splayed about carelessly on every surfaces. Dining space had been converted into a personal place to link into the Net and keep up with all of her work. As much fun as she may have appeared to be having, Izuna was dealing with just as much work on the side. Sure Izuna may have been at the Kinmokusei for those couple days, but her pseudo-identity acted everywhere and all at once— or at least, that was what she liked to think. As time remained stagnant in the windowless casino below, the Revenant worked tirelessly through her helmet while the days passed.

Her motivations were far from being easily explained. Izuna was an enigma as is. The Revenant, even more so when it came to jobs like this. Through all the cloak and dagger, though, one thing remained revealed in the maelstrom of mysteries. Loingsech knew that they were hiring the Revenant, and with Izuna’s past foundationed in the concept of making trouble for corporations just like them, she would have to remain just as vigilant as the corporate dogs that would be looking into her. Izuna knew that without the bat of an eye, her employers would put her down when she wasn’t necessary anymore. That’s why it was her job to remain not only vigilant and watchful, but to also gain the upperhand.

The extravagance of the Kinmokusei was by no means a normality for Izuna, however unfortunately. Thus, her time basking in the sin that was the lifestyle of the very people she so abhorred was soon over. Dining with her enemies was undoubtedly a great time for Izuna, but she came here to work, and it was about time she got things rolling. The exposure of her identity was the greatest risk of all that this trip posed— at least in her head. That much made dealing with her interesting meeting circumstances all the more painful. Fully attired in the same outfit that would could get her arrested in Japan, Izuna posed herself in a corner of the Kinmokusei’s massive lobby. A rather fashionable sweatshirt was all that stood to normalize her Revenant Combat Suit. Of course, a curious look could afford a sight at the Revenant Wiring that lined Izuna’s skin below. Her disguise was lackluster and it surely didn’t fit in with the fancy attire most of the Kinmokusei’s patrons adorned, but Izuna knew that much. This morning would be the first time the Revenant would meet face to face with representatives from Loingsech. Izuna wasn’t going to let herself be caught off guard so easily.

As the E.T.A. of her colleagues drew near, the Revenant rose up and made her way towards the door. The completely conspicuous van that soon made its way into her helmet’s sensors was a clear indication that it was just about time. Shedding her petty disguise, Izuna couldn’t help but feel a tinge of nervousness surge through her. Was she worried about the meeting? No, of course not. Rather, she appeared woefully overdressed in her combat suit compared to the few patrons that also found themselves ushered into the dark van. When another heavily-augmented sort stepped into the van, Izuna found herself relaxing for a bit. Without him, she could have sworn she was stepping into some diplomat’s meeting. The thought of such an event brought Izuna to roll her eyes beneath the concealing visor she sported on her helmet. As much as she wanted to break the ice with the completely silent bunch, who would she be to break her own fear-inducing persona. It was a topic to be discussed another time.

The ride was luckily short enough for the long silence to be tolerable. Izuna merely watched as her cohorts stepped from the van into the stale air of the city. She would be the last to eschew herself from the cover of the vehicle, the sensors and servos of her combat suit whirring to life as she stepped from its concealed carriage. It was clear enough that the Revenant was making all sorts of calculations and gathering as much data about where they were as possible. It was as if Izuna was scanning for an ambush. Of course, with the Net connections in her helmet, doing so was much more subtle than it could have been. The first words belonged to a rather dapper gentleman that Izuna could have mistaken for a normal patron of the Kinmokusei just an hour ago. Contrary to him, Izuna stood wordlessly at the ready, but she did move towards the woman who could only be their assumed contact.