The alley was less than ten meters to her front now. She braced herself for whatever stuns were inevitably about to be thrown at her. Though none of that prepared her for what did hit. The thundercrack split the air itself, rattling windows and nearly putting her on her knees from the concussive blast in her back. She turned to see the vaporization trail cleaving the skyline - a smoky apparition left from the hypervelocity slug of a railgun - and intercepting a larger, blacker smoke trail. The smoke could tell a story all its own, but the roaring growl and secondary cracks and thumps of the freighter breaking up overhead answered the questions first. The percussion ensemble of air defense guns continued to shake the streets, pummelling the runaway hulk as it hurtled towards millions of people. Firecracker flashes came over the silhouettes of the buildings as debris struck the ground, and then the blazing sun stabbed at the stunned eyeballs of bystanders when the largest chunk of what was left made contact. Pressurized hydrogen, methane, hydrazine ... the fuel fires would rage for days.

If she still had her earpiece in, the com van team would be screaming at her. Any hope of a clean operation lay in the flaming wreckage a kilometer away. The wind and smoke and dust and debris from the final slam raced up the streets like a tsunami. Takeda tried to run but there is no outrunning a tsunami. The rushing gale at her back put her face first on the concrete, grating the skin on part of her forearms nicely. She scampered to her feet and made a beeline towards the com van, where Card and the rookies were already set to get the hell out of this place before emergency responders and paramilitary swarmed the whole upper district.

---

“What do you mean ‘they won’t answer’?!” Will Card had been in rage mode since the team had made it back to the complex, since taking over Branch 35’s “war room” operations center in a desperate attempt to salvage their assignment from the calamity created by some moron in a penthouse somewhere.
“Keep trying until you get through and don’t take no for an answer.” he barked at his office staff, “somebody is going to take some God damn accountability for this!”
Gahjotia had been put into a “quarantine” that resembled a military search operation more than a biohazard containment operation. They had sent the location and retrieval tasks down to Jian. They had given them full authority across four districts to pursue the op. And now They had gone over Card’s head, thrown a massive monkey wrench into Jian’s assignment, and were making it damn near impossible to do the job they had been entrusted with in the first place.

The plan being put in place by the silver-spoon executives made complete sense in isolation, but it completely ignored the fact a covert operations group was already in play. Covert ops work because the targets have no idea what’s transpiring around them until it’s too late. Only corpsec, peacekeeper, and emergency vehicles and personnel were being allowed to cross the quarantine line, which not only made it impossible for Jian’s operations to properly flow across their entire assigned area as it was predicted they would have to, it made even operating inside almost all of Gahjotia essentially impossible. There was simply no way to move people and hardware across that quarantine line without giving away the truth that they were really corpsec.

“Jesus christ William calm down!,” Kira was perhaps the only one in the office willing to get in his face, and also the only one who could get away with it consistently, “there’s no point biting everyone else’s heads off because someone went over yours.”
The half-brit sighed. “Still, they gave it to us and then did it themselves anyway. I want them to answer for that.”
“Ha, welcome to my world...” she jabbed, and walked away.
Evidently she was still sore about losing command of the op. He couldn’t afford that right now, so he chased after here. “Kira wait! I thought we were past that.”
“We were .... until you asked me to do the one thing you promised never to ask for and...”
“Kir-”
“Ah ah ah! Save your speech. I know it was ‘for the good of the mission,’” she sneered, “and I accepted that. I dropped six bodies and what do we have to show for that? Jack shit! Maybe if we hadn’t had to abort, maybe if you came back with something more substantial than absolutely fuck all, but right now? Yes Tom, I am mad at you.”

He hated people calling him by his middle name. That was the sign she was royally pissed off. As if her lecturing him at shouting volume in the halls wasn’t enough of a sign already. “What can I do? We cannot be at each other’s throats right now, so how can I make this better?”
“You wanna help, go check on Bravo for me. I’ll be in the war room trying to make sense of things.”
They exchanged a nod and went their separate ways. “I take it this is your op now?” Card called after her.
“Yep, criminal organizations are my world more than yours,” she hollered back, disappearing through the doorway into the war room.

---

In the time it had taken Agent Card to check up on Strike Bravo on the floor below, his protege had taken full control of the situation. Agency staff bustled about with newly issued tasks and a cohesive purpose that was painfully lacking twenty minutes prior. “So how are things going here?”
Kira did not answer. She was bouncing her way between various documents plastering the walls, covering every inch of wallspace not already taken by monitors. “Kira! Do we have anything yet?”
Still she said nothing to him. She pinged from one document to the next, beginning to utter words to herself. “... -think you can hide from me? I got you!”

She ripped her current focus off the wall and slammed it down on the center table for Card. “Boom, we got her.”
“Wait...” Card mused, “‘her’? I was gone for twenty minutes and you have a suspect?”
“If you can call the only person who can possibly have the disk ‘a suspect.’ The list of people with the influence, following, resources and attitude to actually get ahold and keep ahold of this hot potato is pretty short,” Kira rambled on in full bragging mode.
“So who is it you say has the package?”
“Aurora Baines, head of Black Brethren. The queen bitch herself. Her reputation makes me look like Santa Claus. The blood and paper trails both lead to her and the crusade she’s gone on to get ahold of this thing. Peacekeepers and other corpsec outfits likely missed it but like I said, criminal organizations are my world. I’ll stake my reputation on her being our mark.”

There was one obvious question left for William Card to answer. “So what do we do now?”
“E-War is already tracking her down and trying to gauge the situation with 2B’s territory and reach,” she kept bragging, “now we hunt her down.”

There was something seemingly sterile, almost hospital-like about the Bachman & Clench offices that did little to make Calypso feel welcome when she stepped out of the elevator. Artless white walls were illuminated by bright fluorescent lights that buzzed, and not a single head turned as she stepped by the sea of cubicles that stretched from wall to wall. No windows gave any betrayal of sunlight, of if the outside world even existed, of if there was anything beyond this room, and perhaps that was the point. The only noise was the occasional cough, or a stifled yawn, but most of the employees seemed to be busy at work while they stared into space, a mass-produced visor cutting them off from the rest of the world so that they could focus on whatever their task on hand was.

Perhaps, underneath their visor, they were working on a lovely beach, or casually chatting with their coworkers about last night’s game while punching in a few strings of data, or secretly viewing pornography, but Calypso saw nothing more than a bunch of mouth-breathing drones, a hundred or so blips in a network designed to increase profits by a few fractions of a percentage. If this was the price to pay to be rubbed down by cabana boys, perhaps Calypso would reconsider her fantasy after all. She imagined that part of the reason there were no windows in this room was fear that an employee might realize how pointless their existence was and jump out of it. Just being here made Calypso feel uneasy. She quickened her pace as she made her way to the corner office, what was meant to be a light rap-a-tap on the door coming out as a heavy bang-bang. She was so ready to get out of this corporate void.

She thought she heard a come in. Even if she didn’t, she had already opened the door and made her way in, being extra certain to seal the door shut behind her. It was a corner office, although that was only a guess, because instead of windows there were screens that showed aerial views of rolling green landscapes and rushing rivers. A pleasantly sweet aroma filled the air, something like cinnamon apple, and the office was immaculately designed with abstract art, a mahogany desk, and a leather couch. It was a stark contrast between the drab place Calypso had just walked through. Seated behind the desk was a slight woman in an expensive looking pantsuit, her heels kicked up on the desk with one hand behind her head while the other swiped at air. Her hair could hardly be called that; it was more a sculpture made out of obsidian, styled into spiral and molded to fit her head perfectly. Not a single strand was out of place and when the exec moved the hair didn’t even wobble. Unless Calypso was in the wrong room, then this woman went by the moniker Sloan, or at least she did on Capri.

After a few seconds of waiting, Calypso realized that the woman hadn’t even noticed her.

“Excuse me, I—”

“Shit!” yelled the exec as she jumped out of her chair. Sloan was so loud that even Calypso had jumped a little, thinking that perhaps she had gone to the wrong office. “Finally you’re here! You are the delivery girl, right? I mean, look at you, obviously you’re the delivery girl, hah!”

“Sorry for being late,” said Calypso, taking a glance at her phone. She was a few minutes early, still. A look of annoyance came and went before she peered back up at the suit. “Do you have the package?”

“Do I have it?” Sloan sounded almost offended. “Do I have it? Why would I have it?” Calypso looked at her phone again, confirming that the request had been to pick up a package from the sender. Sloan continued, “You’re going to get it for me. Isn’t that what you do?”

“Of course, ma’am, I must’ve misread the description. Where is the pickup?” asked Calypso, ready to be away from this woman as soon as possible. Something about the change in the job stank like a setup.

“Ghajotia,” said Sloan, a cruel smile betraying her lips.

“Sorry, but I can’t do the impossible,” said Calypso with a laugh. “Ghajotia is locked down. I’m a courier, not a cyborg ninja. Unfortunately, it seems we both wasted each other’s time. I know the way out.”

Calypso’s hand was on the door when Sloan spoke, “Maybe we could work something out, Callie.”

Calypso froze for a moment, and then turned back towards Sloan. Sloan had a look of satisfaction on her face as she sat down, beckoning Calypso to join her.

“It’s Calypso.”

“It’s Callie Graham,” said Sloan.

“I think you have me mistaken for someone else,” said Calypso, still standing.

“I think you have me mistaken for an idiot,” said Sloan. “You are Callie Graham, age 23, Bandi residence. A month ago you delivered a package that blew up a skin shop. You work at the Black Hole bar on the border of Bandi and Ghajotia, you’re currently single, and your only family is your mother who lives in Ghajotia. And I can assure you, Ms. Graham, that the reason your mother isn’t responding to your calls is not because she is dead, for the time being at least. A meatbag like you has certainly heard of the hunts, have you not?”

“I have, but my mother is aug—”

“I suggest you shut the hell up and sit the fuck down.”

Calypso shutted the hell up and sat the fuck down.

“You pissed off a lot of powerful people when you blew up that clinic for the Neanderthals, Ms. Graham. A lot of powerful people. That clinic was owned by my company and was frequented by some very dangerous friends of mine, and just about all of them want you dead now.” Sloan paused, letting that thought sink in.

“It was an accident,” said Calypso through gritted teeth. “If I had known what was in the package, I wouldn’t have delivered it.”

“It was negligence brought upon by greed. How many of your little Capri packages do you think ending up hurting others? Just because you don’t know doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen. But I’m not here to lecture you about morality. Besides, you should be more worried about your mortality,” said Sloan, smiling at her own cleverness. “They see you as the cause of a great loss, but I see you as an opportunity. An investment.”

“Most people would just call it blackmail,” said Calypso, her fingers clawing at the chair. “But I’m listening.”

“I am offering you protection, for both you and your mother, from the Shepherd and the more radical of the sheep in his flock,” said Sloan. “I suggest you accept it, or the friends of mine might have to forcefully extract the augmentations from your mother before dropping her off in Awakened territory.”

“It’s pretty clear that I have no other option here, but you could at least give me the catch before I sign away my soul.”

“The catch is we now own you, at least until you make us enough money to make up for the loss caused by you blowing up one of our clinics. Trust me, it’s a fairly hefty sum, and a gutter rat like you is more likely to catch a bullet before she ever sees that much money, but it’s the only chance you got.” Sloan slid open a drawer on the other side of the desk. “Alternatively, I could settle things for you right now.”

“Well,” Calypso tried to smile to hide her fear, “looks like I’ll be getting a job out of this interview after all. Consider me a proper lackey, then.”

“Delightful. I knew you would do the smart thing,” said Sloan, closing the drawer. “Let’s shake on it to make it official.”

Sloan barely reached over her side of the desk, forcing Calypso to stand up to shake the other woman’s hand. The moment her tentative hand touched Sloan’s she realized her apprehension to touch the other woman was justified as Sloan’s hand clasped around Calypso’s wrist with a crushing grip. Sloan slammed Calypso’s hand onto the desk and twisted, forcing Calypso to her knees as she yelped in pain. Calypso caught Sloan’s left hand part as a blade emerged and she looked away, a louder scream erupting from her throat as she felt the knife tear through her right pinky finger. Blood spurted across the desk as Sloan let go of Calypso, who quickly put pressure on her right hand as she bit down on her tongue to distract herself from the pain. Calypso felt a hand wrap around her ponytail as she was pulled up to her feet and onto the desk so that her ear was inches away from Sloan’s mouth.

“Consider that your apology. Welcome to the Consortium,” said Sloan, her voice seething with anger. “If you ever try to fuck us over, you’ll wish that the Awakened had gotten to you instead. Now get the fuck out of my office. I’ll contact you when you’re in Ghajotia.”

It was raining. Of course it fucking was. All it ever did was fucking rain. Cayne had only stepped off the train three seconds ago, yet the murky clouds of toxic smog had already opened up. He rolled his eyes in annoyance, reaching a hand up to the top of his head to pull his hood down further over his face. The one downside to having hypersensitivity implants installed that he had found so far was the rain. To most, the dull acid drops slid right off their skin, but for Cayne, every drop left a small burning sensation that was far from painful, but certainly irritating. Sure, he could hear things he would never have been able to before, and his vison was like watching an extremely high definition display forever. But god, it made the rain annoying. One robotic, boot-clad foot set down in front of the other, and he was off, striding over the cracked concrete of the platform towards the terminal. He was glad to be off the crowded transport, even if it did mean walking the neon-bathed streets of Arcadia, with the rain pouring down and the foul air, a rotten mixture of chemical pollutants and cigarette smoke, assaulting his nose.

The walk along the unsheltered platform was longer than Cayne cared for. Soon he was back under cover, the automatic terminal doors making way for him with a reluctant hiss. It was cold inside, and it stank of piss, Trace and god only knows what else. A small crowd had formed around the security gates, a less than orderly queue trying to squeeze through as fast as they could. Not that there was anything to see. The only thing on the other side of those gates were the shit-stained, gang infested streets of the Delcos District. Cayne waited patiently, trying his best to ignore the fact that almost everyone around him was completely clean of augmentations. He counted to ten in his head, trying to suppress his natural urge to cleanse them all of their sins. They were ignorant; they knew not that they did wrong, but that did not make them innocent. Everyone in the densely packed terminal crowd barged each other, but no one dared lay a finger on Cayne. It only took one glance at the gargantuan mountain of metal and meat for most people to decide it was probably wiser to just move out of the way.

After little more than a minute of waiting, Cayne stepped up and presented his ID. He nodded to the guard; a friendly looking, middle-aged man with dark skin and a scruffy black beard. The man was heavily augmented, sporting a fashionable robotic eye with a warm blue glow that Cayne knew was filing the faces of every person here. But not Cayne. He was on Cayne's payroll. They had danced this dance a number of times beyond counting. In a matter of seconds Cayne was through, registered under a random name every time. Technically, Damiran Cayne had never entered the Delcos district, the stronghold of the Awakened crime syndicate. But, Scott Rogan, Ben Baxter, and hundreds of other faceless Arcadian nobodies had passed through this gate in recent months in his place. No one could pin Cayne here no matter how hard they tried. The light above the gate flashed green, briefly highlighting the narrow smirk on Cayne's shadowed face, and the glass panels parted to let him pass. Cayne had learned that in a world like this, where a different gang owned every pavement slab and leaning on the wrong wall could get you shot, it was important to enjoy the little things. Sliding through checks like this was just one of the thousands of little things that Cayne had come to love about being the boss.

The streets of the Delcos District had become almost comfortingly familiar to Cayne. His personal dwelling was elsewhere but Delcos felt like home. Towering buildings flanked the closest thing Delcos had to a high street, and a plethora of neon signs flooded the battered pavement with an eerie multi-coloured hue. Over a mile of shops to either side of the terminal were the first thing most people saw of the place. All manner of small-time businesses made their home here, from small clinics and clothes shops to cafes and bars. None of them would ever reach the heights of the Mega-Corps, but they did enough to keep themselves afloat for the time being. Easier said than done, given the way things were these days. On the surface, Cayne's gang presided over a relatively peaceful district. There was very little gang conflict since the Awakened had driven most of them out. Violence was rarer here on the streets than other parts of the city and the crime rate was relatively low. It was when you dug deeper below the façade of relative safety that the roots of Cayne's gang became more and more evident. The night time disappearances had raised a few eyebrows but with so little evidence to go on there was nothing the Peacekeepers could do. Roughly one in every three of the boys in blue that walked these streets had been paid off by the Awakened to look the other way, and given their poor pay and poorer life expectancies they were often more than happy to take the bribe. Those that weren't often disappeared themselves. In truth Cayne's gang owned much of the territory here by law, having invested heavily in a number of the local businesses, swooping in at times of hardship to lift them out of trouble in exchange for impossible, bottomless debt that they could never shake free. That way the Awakened were able to financially sustain themselves, and got the double bonus of being able to use the stores as fronts for their often less than legitimate dealings.

It was a sweet deal to be sure, and one greatly pleasing to a man like Cayne who placed emphasis on efficiency and power above all else. The Awakened didn't need anyone to thrive, and Cayne liked it that way. Anyone who wasn't with them was against them and needed to be cleansed. They were certainly a few enemies at the moment. The Black Brethren, more specifically, Aurora Baines, had managed to find the Golden Disk. The Awakened had been waiting and preparing, rather than searching, and now that the Disk had finally been unearthed, it would only be a matter of time until the Shepherd set his disciples loose on Arcadia. With the Disk in their hands the Shepherd could usher in a new age of prosperity and fast-track humanity's evolution, extinguishing the souls of the unworthy and ascending those who deserved it. It would be glorious. The other, a girl. That was all Cayne knew. She had delivered a suspicious package to a Skin shop frequented by several of Cayne's men a few weeks back. It had turned out to be a bomb. She almost certainly was working for someone; there was no way she would have known unless someone else had directed her there. The only way to be sure would be to find her, and have someone peel her pathetic flesh from her bones until the little mouse squeaked. Cayne had his men all over Arcadia listening in for news on both the girl and the Disk, but so far, no leads.

Cayne kept his head down as he walked, turning a left out of the terminal doors and mixing into the crowds along the pavement. It was late evening, and the sky above Arcadia probably would have been a brilliant golden lightshow were it not for the choking grey clouds and the shadows cast by the reaching peaks of Arcadia's skyline. The street was alive with people of all sorts flooding in and out of various establishments to listen to music far too loudly and get way too drunk and high. Cayne pitied them; life without a purpose was not worth living, and for your sole purpose to be to get blackout drunk and off your face on Trace? It didn't bear thinking about. It took about fifteen minutes of trudging in the rain, moving people out of his way with his shoulders and ignoring the insults of drunken fools for Cayne to reach his destination. A few turns, and then eventually left down an alleyway, past a sleeping homeless man slumped against the wall. It was narrow, with only a few inches of space on either side of Cayne's broad shoulders, and easily missed by most.

Eventually the alleyway opened up onto a much quieter street. The buzz of the bars and the blaring music was little more than a dull murmur in the background from her. This part of town was a run-down and long-abandoned industrial complex. The factories and warehouses here had belonged to various corporations over the past decades but their current state of disrepair and awkward location in regards to transporting manufactured goods meant that when they had gone on the market, no one had taken up the offer. Cayne's gang had made extensive use of the opportunity this had given them. None of the buildings looked particularly suspicious from the outside, but after Cayne had passed through the gate in the chain-link fence and in through a locked side door, he was back in his hive of criminal comrades.

This factory was in a better state than most. It was high-roofed, reaching as tall as three stories with a basement below. The main floor was a basic construction line that Cayne had long ago tasked his men with repairing with so far little success. Since then it had been utilized as a common space, adorned with battered old sofas, pool tables and TVs. The walls were solid grey concrete, illuminated by rows of white strip lights hanging from the ceiling. The second and third levels were accessible as steel walkways, giving a view over the entire floor and leading to what used to be a staff room and several offices. The air was thick with smoke and heavy rock music boomed out from a cleverly arranged speaker system, echoing off the walls of the cavernous construct. No one even looked up as Cayne entered. He headed straight for the stairs, his every step causing a great metallic thud that was drowned out by the raucous chatter of the thirty or so heavily augmented men and women in the factory and the loud music.

On the third tier Cayne entered his office, and sat down. It was by far the nicest room in the factory. Dark, blood red carpet met the dark walls and warm yellow lights lit the room from each corner. A small wooden dark was in the far corner, partnered with a comfy black leather office chair. Cayne took of his jacket, throwing it over the back of the chair, and then his hoodie, letting it drop to the floor by his side. In just a tight t-shirt, the full extent of Cayne's modifications was visible. Thankfully, the air here was cleaner and the music drowned out. He reached down the where the PC sat under the desk and grabbed the jack, plugging it into the neural port at the bottom his skull. His ghostly white eyes turned red, and his mind was synchronized to the system. Cayne clicked the monitor on his desk on, prompting the black and red display to fire into life. There were several emails and messages, as expected; various reports on successful dealings and a number of meaningless memos that Cayne had seen a thousand times. Cayne scrolled from the bottom up, nonchalantly, uninterested, until at the top he saw an email titled URGENT! Cayne opened it by instinct. In his mind, the words were directly in front of his eyes; the monitor was largely redundant thanks to Cayne's link. He scanned it once, then twice to make sure what he had read was correct. If he still had his eyes, they would have widened. Quietly, he muttered, "Well. No shit."

E-War had an entire floor of the Branch 35 complex to itself. Their operations room put the war room to shame. E-War’s ops room was the official remote command center for operations. Mobile command vehicles, M-coms, were always there for any real op but the big ones ... the ops that involved aircraft, four or more strike teams, dozens of support personnel, and fell under the highest priority missions ... those used Ops Command. Kira finally rated high enough to run her missions from Ops Command this time, if she wanted to that was. She was a street operative for a long time. The dirty, run-down streets of Arcadia’s backwater slums where gangs large and small squabbled over turf smaller than a single city block day in and day out were her stomping grounds. Kira was raised in the trenches. She wanted to be leading from the front, rifle in hand with the rest of the troops, but one of the drawbacks of commanding a large scale operation like this was a need to see the whole picture constantly. That meant being in Ops Command instead.

Someone was throwing up a bunch of chatter near the target, but their security was giving E-War a run for their money, which was an impressive feat to say the least. As one tech had put it, “no one layer is particularly difficult but there’s more layers here than an overgrown vidalia onion on steroids.”
E-War was apparently able to brute force it in about five minutes if they wanted to, but the silent approach required roughly 60 seconds per layer over 30 or more layers. The amateurish implementation was not helping them either. Fortunately they weren’t limited to that as their main method of tracking their target. E-War’s reach was seemingly infinite. It wasn’t clear if their mark had already vacated the premises but if she was still there then there would inevitably be a massive gunfight. 2B was not going to be taken down quietly.

The teams were mobilizing in V-72 Kaiju aircraft for fast response. Among the transport birds was also an AV-72F model, a VTOL gunship with enough firepower to level the building they were preparing to storm. All the birds were warmed up and ready to go, just pending positive ID on the target. The drone circling over north Gahjotia would make short work of that. The overhead feed of the dilapidated warehouse commandeered the largest region of Ops Command’s wall-to-wall display. “MSIP online, scanning.”

The multi-spectral imaging platform: an absolute miracle of modern optical tech. The suite equipped to the drone could tell them height, gender, approximate age, and the class of weapon drawn, all through the roof of the structure being surveilled. If their target, Baines, so much as stepped outside of that building, E-War would have positive identification in seconds. That though required her to step outside. By the drone’s live feed, that moment appeared to have passed. Every body detected within the building appeared very dead, and the live bodies were mostly in vehicles already. The few who were successfully identified were just meaningless grunts that could be tracked down and interrogated later.

“Shit, they’re already on the move!” Takeda swore, scrambling for a contingency, “can we retask more drones? We cannot lose any of these victors!”
“Negative boss not before we lose half of them,” came the disappointing status report.
“Then what satellites are overhead right now?”
Drones could provide better imaging in almost every case but tracking a lot of objects in a relatively large area was one realm that a satellite could in fact produce better results.
“None of our own,” again the E-War team making a disappointing report, “but uh, we have Drake Tech’s OnyxSat overhead for the next ninety minutes.”
“Steal that. We never did get along with Drake Tech anyway,” she gave her orders and then stepped towards the back of the room.

A moment to breathe was pleasant. They were too late to grab Baines, and if she slipped away now then all the effort put into tracking her was for nought. It was a frustrating thought that could cloud her judgement were she not careful. Her moment of peace truly was only a moment though before something else interfered. A new face had shown up bearing gifts ... or work. Manilla folders were enigmatic like that. “S.S.A. Takeda?”
That was her cue to go back to work. “Yes that’s my name, don’t wear it out kid.”
“Looks like Panopticon is trying to kiss our asses from earlier. They sent over contact info for over two dozen deep cover assets and recent intelligence reports. I’ve been going through them and I found something your boss told me to show you A.S.A.P.”

Kira took the folder from the messenger and flipped it open on an empty nearby workstation. “What’s your name kid?”
“Agent Sam Irwin ...ma’am.”
“I’ll accept Sir if it makes a woman outranking you easier Agent.”
“It's not that, its... are you really a Yakuza hitman?” he chomped on his foot, promptly backpedalling “I mean before you were Jian, of course ...”
“Almost six years. And before you ask, yes I am exactly as dangerous as everyone has led you to believe and this is good shit Agent,” Kira’s train of thought jumping the tracks part way through responding.

The junior agent just nodded, impressed at her reputation and thankful he had been useful. Kira flagged one of the E-War techs and started privately discussing the file. Irwin took a step to try and hear but before he could do any real eavesdropping, it was over. “Get a drone up over Lawrence Plaza, south tower. I don’t care what we need to retask. I want eyes there now!”
“Sir that’s all the way in Pleiades-”
“Source from Panopticon inside Bachman & Clench says Nazyashi is making a move from there. Bachman & Clench is on the 23rd floor of Lawrence Plaza number four tower, south. We’re looking for their courier. If Nazyashi is making a move then we’re intercepting their play and hijacking it for our own purposes.”
A switch had flipped in Takeda. Before all of Jian was gearing up to take on 2B, the Black Brethren. Now the op she was running had seemingly changed gears to hunt the package manually, and to screw over Nazyashi. “What are we looking for then?”
“We want their courier when they leave the tower. Remembering how the Consortium works, they will be poor, unkempt, and uncomfortable. They will likely appear out of place in Pleiades and under duress. Background will be low income, high susceptibility to blackmail. If they still prey on the same type I remember, expect a young female, 16 to 28 ... keep an eye out for hand injuries.”

Kira turned to leave Ops Command, “I’m gonna need my gear,” muttered under her breath.
“How’d you know all that? It wasn’t in the intel I found ...” Agent Sam asked as she passed by.
“Yakuza hitman, remember? Now Agent I need you to get in contact with that source. Panopticon must have given us a way to contact them. Find out everything you can about that courier and bring it to the guys here in Ops Command.”
Both of them left the room and went separate ways down the halls.

Agent Sam was back in not quite fifteen minutes with yet another ambiguous manilla folder in hand. The Panopticon asset inside Bachman & Clench had answered his phone and paved the way to El Dorado for them. He had a full face and clothing description for the E-War techs to apply to the tracking software. To make matters easier, the recording storage on the lobby cameras was poorly secured behind basic login and drive encryption. At his suggestion, they were able to run back the lobby cams to find her entering and make the tracking data that much more complete. Face identification would give them background info soon enough. Takeda was right it seemed that Nazyashi Consortium preferred young women. It should have surprised no one in Jian at this point, but the junior agent was not yet a grizzled pessimist. He feared for what that syndicate of criminals had planned for her.

‘S.S.A. Takeda,’ as he knew her, came back with her usual complement of bad guy harming tools, ready to dash out on a moment's notice. As if by providence, that moment came almost the instant she re-entered the room. “Target acquired! Courier just showed up in the lobby. Drone is ready to track.”
Without a word, Kira was gone, dashing down the hallway at a dead run. William Card had come to check on her around this time, hoping she was no longer interested in berating him, and was nearly put on the ground. “Kira where are you running!” he had to yell after her for she was stopping for no man.
“Found an asset!” was all she had the time to answer before reaching the stairwell doors and heading for the garage.
Card turned his head to see Sam Irwin staring dumbfounded outside Ops Command and went to pursue answers. “She should be on channel 5,” he muttered as he put in his earpiece, “Oh shit ... she’s mirroring.”
Agent Irwin was confused at whatever Card saw on the main display. “Sir?”
“She's thinking with her rage and not her head.”

Life was funny. Perhaps nowadays, the notion of an interventionist god plucking the strings of fate echoed hollow across a synthetic landscape which had cunningly replaced religion with corporations, a culture which swapped sermons for VR headsets.

But life was funny. Hell of a sense of humor.

The universe, the algorithms, Murphy's law, whatever you wished to call it, it had a way of keeping even the most competent schemer on their toes. This was one of those moments. A rude awakening where one was left with little to do besides tip their hat to whatever forces, whether cosmic or (more likely) terrestrial, had orchestrated such a colossal shitstorm as had been kicked up across the Trinity Districts of Ghajotia, Troia & Delcos.

Casio’s lips were creased into a hard frown. Video streaming crisply across his vision, crimson stained hands buried in the chest of his final ‘project’ for the day. A cluster of images rolled slowly, dominating his ocular perception. They followed the fiery arch of the falling craft, from different angles, while The Florist’s practiced digits rewired the inner workings of the woman’s body, sightless.

Several angles, hacked feeds he’d received from The Mouth, clearly revealed the vessel lurch like a broken bird from the sky above Arcadia. A metal carcass drifting, hobbled, long before the aug-rattling thud of the Rail-Rounds ripped across the atmosphere. Organic lids narrowed across the glowing inner-workings of Flores’ optics. This stank of corporate interference.

Selecting a high-res playback from a civic building rooftop, he watched again as the craft shuddered suddenly, the engines sputtering weakly as it tilted aggressively off-route. There were plenty of corporations both willing and able to achieve like this. The list wasn’t extensive, but it was only just countable on both hands and toes. But the crash site? Far too much of a coincidence.

Word was spreading. The first hornet’s nest was to be kicked.

Casio closed off the feeds, clicking the final piece into place within the woman’s rib cage. Bios were always the worst. Their virgin flesh was so cluttered, none of their veins or organs had been tidied up, they leaked everywhere without diligent cauterization.

Still, it was a labor of love. And love was messy.

Flores had learned rather quickly that Neanderthals hadn’t earned their nicknames lightly. They took themselves, VERY seriously. It stood to reason the overly aggro oafs were already expecting retaliation for the little stunt they pulled with the delivery girl, Calypso; and their constant inspection of their members would guarantee the new upgrade in this woman’s chest would be detected by the scanners at the first checkpoint of any worth.

The skin of her torso hissed as the NuBio™ FRSHSknSpray© did its work, seamlessly sealing his work inside.

Those ‘pure’ weren’t known for their delicate nature. They’d drag her somewhere secure, away from prying eyes and she’d be torn to shreds in their search for her callous discretion. Even if they were careful, it didn’t much matter. They’d figure out she was telling the truth, that she hadn’t voluntarily gotten any work done.

Epiphany in the form of an explosion.

That nasty little device in her chest, it would detonate, taking a sizable chunk of Neanderthal territory with it. By Casio’s estimation, this was likely to result in another subsequent ‘retaliation’ in the direction of whatever faction the Pure were already looking for a halfway decent excuse to attack.

Little Projects had a way of coalescing into tangible results. Sometimes you just had to give that first domino a little push.

“That’s assuming she can make it back to whatever gleaming Purist rathole she crawled out of.” He reminded himself aloud, face a mask of impassiveness as he washed the copper stench from his hands.

The lockdown changed things. His street was lucky enough to be untarnished by the hail of debris which peppered his district of Delcos, but he would still be suffering the consequences of the increased Peacekeeper presence. Casio brought up a holo-display of the the damage, and the estimated locations of the lockdown checkpoints. Endless chatter clogged the scanners, and the sky was already thick with corporate flies, buzzing over the remains. There was little time to waste.

"I want a name." The gloved fist of one of Cayne's men cracked against the man's jaw and he slumped, the only thing stopping him from falling to the ground being the other two gang members holding him up by each arm. The man spat, a horrid concoction of blood, spit and at least one splinter from his teeth. Cayne himself stood watching, out of distance of any potential, unfortunate, splatters, with his thick arms folded across his chest. He had been watching his men for a few minutes now as they set about their work, opting against getting his own hands dirty. Besides, having grunts do it for him made him look more powerful, and was thus more intimidating. The man in front him, hanging limp in the hands of two heavily augmented gangsters, was named Calum Alpwood, but no one who knew him would recognize him now. His face had been mauled, with one eye socket visibly dislocated and the other swollen and purple. His lips were puffy and split in numerous places, and a foamy dribble of blood was leaking from the gaps in his gum where his teeth used to be, running down his chin and dripping onto the floor. Cayne didn't feel sorry for him; he had no space in his limited repertoire of emotions for pity, especially not for a man like Calum; a Neanderthal.

Calum lifted his head and the same fist struck him again, this time on the nose, setting his blood running like someone had turned on a tap. Pathetic, Cayne thought to himself, staring down at the bloodied and battered man before him through his haunting, grey cybernetic eyes. The display in his vision was showing Calum's vital signs to Cayne. At the start his heart rate had increased drastically to 112bpm, but with every subsequent punch the spike got smaller, as if he was fading. We don't have a lot of time. Cayne stepped forward, the sound of his boot thudding against the pavement enough to make the four men around Calum to take a step back. He fell to his hands and knees without anyone supporting him, breathing heavily and retching up small amounts of bloody phlegm. Cayne stood, silent, watching, towering over him. His breathing had become laboured. He looked up at Cayne, trying to look unimpressed. What he didn't realize was that Cayne could literally see the signs of terror thanks to his scanner. "You finally gonna hit me now then?" His voice was weak and raspy, every word was an effort.

"No." Cayne's reply was blunt. "If I hit you, you'll die. And I don't want to kill you." Cayne reached down with one hand and grabbed the collar of Calum's jacket and hauled him to his feet, holding him up on his feet thanks to the strength of his augmented arms. "I want a name. I've told you this. I'm trying my best to be patient with you Calum, but now you're really starting to fuck me off." His eyes met Cayne's implants. Cayne's face was calm, a pool of water with not a ripple on the surface. His eyes betrayed no emotion, nor did his mouth. Calum's heart rate quickened a little. "Don't make me ask again." Cayne could smell iron on his breath as the blood had begun to congeal and oxidise.

"I can't do that. You know I can't... they'll kill me man! They'll kill me, they'll tear me apart piece by piece. Please."

"They won't lay a finger on you. We will protect you, better yet, we'll fix you. But I can only help you, Calum, if you help me. So c'mon, let's help each other." Calum still seemed unsure. "If you can't help me, then you're of no use to me. And if that's the case," Cayne's left hand folded in on itself, and from his middle finger a long, serrated knife came forth. "Then I'm going to slash your thighs and wrists, and leave you here to die in your own blood. It's your choice. Doesn't bother me either way." Cayne was doing his best to stay calm. They needed that name. The Shepherd's message had been clear enough; the bombing was orchestrated by the Neanderthals. And this man, this pathetic, drug-addicted waste of oxygen knew who'd delivered it. The girl. He was a nobody, no-one would miss him. He had no family apart from a little sister he lost contact with years ago, and he was a nobody among his gang. The girl wasn't even high priority. The Disk came first, and then the Neanderthals. The girl was just sport, revenge for the inconvenience they had caused. Cayne almost considered her collateral. But until he was finally unleashed, the Sheepdog was quite content to make the most of the bone he'd been thrown for the time being. He had already been thinking about how much fun they could have when Cayne finally got a hold of her.

"She goes by Calypso." He practically spat the name in Cayne's face. Calum let his head drop in shame, disgusted that he'd let himself be broken. Cayne didn't blame him. He'd spent a solid 10 minutes being wailed on by men with enhanced strength, and he was just a pathetic creature of mortal flesh. "What's her real name?"

"I don't know, I swe-" Cayne's hand had moved, lightning fast, gripping Calum's scrawny neck and lifting him off his feet, bringing his eyes level with Cayne's. His feet were kicking wildly, and his hands scrabbled at Cayne's massive hand as he croaked and gasped. The choke was total; he could barely even make a noise. His eyes had gone wide, and his skin and turned dark red as the blood flow out of his face was restricted. Cayne held him for 10 seconds at least, watching the life slowly slip out of his eyes, when he dropped him. Calum fell flat, spluttering by Cayne's feet. Cayne looked at the sleeve of his hoodie in disgust, noticing the stain from Calum's blood and making a mental note to get it dry cleaned tomorrow. He barely let Calum catch his breath before he hauled him up to his feet.

"Please... I don't," he took a deep breath, coughed, and then spat out a mouthful of spit and blood, "I don't know anything else. She's a delivery girl, freelance. Please." Another mouthful. "That's all I know." Cayne paused for a moment. This man knew his life was on the line. Nothing made a man more honest than the prospect of not waking up tomorrow. He doubted Calum was lying. He looked around at his men. They had been standing motionless, not making a sound, observing. "Take him to Nate. And make sure he fixes his face, I don't wanna see shit like that in my safehouse." The first man, the one who had been throwing the punches, nodded in response. He was grotesque; six glowing robotic eyes made him look like a spider and he was wearing a respiratory mask over the lower half of his face. He relinquished a syringe, holding Calum down with one hand and using the other to empty its contents into his blood stream. He was unconscious almost instantly. They picked him up, the largest of the four slinging his limp body over his shoulder, and without a word headed off down the alleyway.

Cayne pulled his hood back up, sporting a grey hoodie today, and pulled his jacket sleeve down to cover the stain. He went in the other direction. He didn't care if his lackeys got caught, but Cayne could do without going to prison before his work on his world was complete. It had been a busy day, travelling around and getting information out of unfortunately stubborn clients. Cayne decided to settle into a sports bar for the evening. He ordered food; a hot dog and fries, onion rings, and beer. Four bottles over an hour. There were enough people for Cayne to blend in, sat in a booth on his own opposite one of the large screens. Cayne had just ordered a fifth beer to the table, when he noticed people crowding on the pavement. At first he dismissed it, but just seconds later, sound cracked the air, booming over the city. Was that... a railgun? Cayne walked briskly towards the door, joining the crowd. People were screaming now, shoving and running. Outside it was crazy, mobs of people assembled on the sidewalk, every single on of them looking up. Cayne's mouth opened in surprise.

Both parts of the craft were freefalling, split by a failed attempt to destroy it with rail rounds. The smaller safety craft around it had given up. There was no stopping this thing, a great metal ship. It was all about the reaction now. Things were already too far gone to stop it now. The smaller vessels pulled away, and the flurry of fire attempting to halt its descent had ceased. Cayne watched speechless as it hurtled downwards. Was this really happening? He began to wonder if he had just had one too many beers and his cybernetics were playing up. All of his questions were wiped away as the ground shook and the craft collided with the ground. A cloud of dust and debris kicked up, and covered everything. Cayne ducked down, pulling his hoodie up over his face and his t-shirt up to cover his mouth and nose, and waited for it to pass.

- Miranda -

Alive? Work to be done. Shut down the sale, we don’t know who is watching. Noose is attempting to close on the Black Queen, she’s likely already gone underground. Those warehouses connect to the old tram systems. Too many corps are mobilizing for direct action. We need to restructure the board.

Miranda sighed and swore. This is what she got for bothering C when he was wrist deep in some schlep's chest cavity. The man's view of the world was like no other's on the face of Mars, but one of the issues of that was he lost sight of little things like reputation or business, or how the hell they're supposed to pay for his many and sundry schemes. She couldn't blame him, he came from a world where Money was like dust. Always there, and blowing in and out with the wind. Didn't make walking away from a potential windfall any less agonizing though. But, while she might run some day to day aspects of their organization, C was still the boss.
Which merely left the question of how she was supposed to disappoint this large crowd of Gangsters, crooks and Corp gunsels. Simply turning off her phone for the night wasn't a option. Raising a fuss about an attempt to grab up the Info without paying wouldn't fly either, Mouth's Boy had been good about shocking anyone who tried, and letting the other bidders see the consequences on live feed.

It was about at this point, without warning Miranda crashed into a sign. Which sent her flying from her hornet and leaving her rolling and sprawling on the hard, unforgiving pavement. After a few minutes of wincing, twitching and staring balefully at the obstacle which left her in this state, and checked on the state of her contacts. Bidding war had disconnected, as far as anyone who was calling her could tell, she had crashed and died (this prompted her to heck her pulse, bit thready). No point in letting them think otherwise, she figured as she brushed herself off and gave her eyes a quick examine. Busted, she could still see in one eye, but the other one was static ridden. She could stil take calls, but there'd be garbling. All in all, a good a reason as any to call it a night. The lid and Po-Po would just have to take care of themselves.

-C-
Copy. Going to head back to home base. Eyes need some TLC.

“Get him inside.” Aurora commanded one of the armour-clad figures, who promptly grabbed Dack by the scruff of his collar, and hurled him through the doorway, with augmented strength.

Dack slammed into the floor, his head thudding against the ground. His world became an explosion of bright white, his vision spinning madly. He felt as though someone had taken a hammer to his skull, as though his brain matter was leaking out through the freshly formed cracks in his cranium.

“Stand up, maggot.”

That same robotic hand hoisted him back up out of the dirt. He was powerless, a limp doll in the hands of his cyborg puppet master.

Aurora Baines gave a little wave at the dusty booths and tables which littered the inside of The Rusted Bitch.

“It's not exactly a fortress, but it will have to do,” she thought allowed, giving an empty beer bottle a frustrated kick with one booted foot “I don’t know who has orchestrated this clever little ambush, but they’ll be sorry they ever fucked with the Black Queen.”

The Brethren dumped Dack in an old booth, with a shotgun aimed squarely at his head, before they set about fortifying the old bar. Bits of debris were fastened over neglected door frames, whilst the rest of Aurora’s foot soldiers deployed whirring sentry guns, pointing them at the bar’s windows, and duel entrances.

Dack slumped, defeated and dejected. A crestfallen sigh slipped out of him.

“I’m sorry about your friends.”

Dack looked up, startled.

The figure pointing the shotgun at Dack had spoken, in a voice that was muffled by its featureless black helmet, made indistinct and genderless.

“Huh?”

“I’m sorry about your friends,” the shotgun-wielder said again, in a quiet tone “that must have been a real knock for you.”

Dack nodded, lost for words.

“You’ll make it out of this, kid,” the figure promised “one day, one day soon, this will all be a wretched memory.”

“Aurora said she would kill me.” Dack muttered.

“Maybe,” the figure shrugged “or maybe she won’t. I don’t think she will.”

“What makes you say that.”

“I dunno, kid,” the figure replied “but if she does, you’re more than welcome to say I told you so.”

Dack laughed at that.

“You smoke?” black mask asked.

Dack nodded.

With a cybernetica hand still pointing the shotgun at Dack, the dark figure reached into one of the pouches on his belt, fishing out a silver tin. The figure slid the tin over to Dack, who pried it open, to reveal a line of cigarettes.

Dack slipped one into his mouth, and the microscopic, sensor activated, lighters inside the straight ignited, lighting the cigarette for him.

The young man took a gentle drag, feeling the nicotine high rush to his brain. He exhaled a plume of grey smoke, relaxing slightly.

“I promise you, kid,” the figure nodded “one day soon...this will all be a wretched memory.”

Gritted teeth muted a guttural scream as Calypso pushed the burning tip of the medigel syringe, a gift from Sloan, against her wound, her eyes closing tight as the scorching, gelatinous substance sealed up the wound. She dropped the single-use syringe on the bathroom tile and steadied herself against the marble countertop as the gray gel shifted to match the pigment of her skin. She felt her heart rate stabilize as the mild sedative in the gel began to kick in, and Calypso finally opened her eyes to look at the damage. She winced at the sight of half of her pinky being gone and shoved her injured hand in her jacket’s pocket with a sigh of frustration. After another second to collect herself, the courier walked out of the bathroom and headed towards the elevator with the pace of someone trying, and failing, to appear calm.

She practically punched the call button with her fist, and pretty much collapsed against the wall once the elevator’s door closed. A hundred thoughts were racing through Calypso’s head, one problem after another problem with seemingly no solution for any of it. There was no guarantee that her mother was actually alive, no certainty that Calypso would be let to live after she did this job for Sloan, and not a chance that the job would be an easy one. Calypso imagined that the Nazyashi wouldn’t even kept track of the debt she owed them. Instead, they’d continue to jerk her along like a dog on a chain until she outlived her usefulness and sell her out to the Awakened to curry favor with them as they went up against the Black Brethren. She knew well enough that if she tried to disappear now they’d most certainly come after her and if she tried to retaliate everyone that she had even one friendly conversation with would be at risk of a culling. Her best, and perhaps only option, was to make herself too useful to be killed, but to even attempt to do that she’d have to find someway to sneak into a Quarantine Zone.

Easy, right?

Calypso flipped out her phone as the elevator hit the lobby floor. She thumbed through her contacts as she walked by the secretary, who gave her a smile that was anything but friendly, and then hurried out the front door. She clicked on Miranda’s name. If anyone knew how to sneak through a lockdown, it’d be that girl. Calypso moved away as quickly as possible from the shadow of the Bachman & Clench tower as she typed out a message, hovered her hand over the send button, and then erased it. Miranda was a smart cat, but she was also a curious one. Calypso rewrote the message, pretending that she was trying to get out of Quarantine Zone for her own safety, and sent the message. She then sent somewhat identical copies of the message to others in the know as she made her way to the rail station, her attention hardly focused on what was in front of her at all.

---

---

Calypso felt eyes watching her and, for just a moment, pulled her own eyes away from the comfort of her own phone screen. That moment was enough time for her to notice the Asian woman dressed in business attire that, upon eye contact, flagged her down. Calypso felt her throat tighten—she had hardly left the Nazyashi front office and already she was being hounded by one of them. Had Sloan forgotten something? Was she about to lose another finger? Part of her wanted to take off running for the railway, but if the woman was with the Consortium then that would only do herself harm. Besides, perhaps it was going to be something completely innocuous, just an office worker in need of some directions. Whatever she wanted, there was no way for Calypso to avoid her without it looking like she was doing just that.

"Did you need something?" asked Calypso as she approached Kira, slowing down drastically but not fully stopping quite yet.

Kira gestured ahead, "keep walking."

She crossed behind Calypso instead of staying to her right and matched pace. Being on the left with her good arm behind the woman actually disadvantaged her - drawing her weapon would be harder - but it presented her good side. The older woman seemed to carefully hide the scarring across her face. It also revealed her earpiece tethering her back to Ops Command. Perhaps a regular Bluetooth would have suggested less in that regard than a military grade earpiece. She spoke softly to avoid eavesdropping. "It may be asking a lot but I need you to trust me unconditionally for the next five minutes," she urged, her powers of persuasion facing a legitimate test, "I am the one person in this god-forsaken city here to get you out from the rock and the hard place Nazyashi has you between."

She seemed to squirm in her own body, uneased by the cold reality before her that Calypso would likely just run. There would be no point stopping her if she did. If she ran now, Kira would likely not see her again until her body washed up somewhere, another casualty of the massive and dangerous game playing out in the Arcadian streets.

However, Calypso did not run. She listened to what the other woman had to say and kept walking as she slid her phone into her jacket pocket, leaving her hand inside. Sloan had put her on edge, and she wasn't about to let yet another person get the jump on her; her fingertips were brushing against the hilt of her concealed weapon. She eyed the woman as she shifted around her, briefly catching the scars that she had originally missed. Between that and the earpiece it was clear to Calypso that Kira wasn't just some business woman, although as to what she actually was still mystified Calypso. Her words made it seem that she wasn't with the Nazyashi, thankfully, although it could've been a loyalty test. It was a bit early in the game for that sort of thing, Calypso felt, but she was still uneasy.

She doubted that unease was hidden as she opened her mouth and her voice, crackling with dryness, quietly eked out, "I'm pretty busy, but I can spare five." She found her courage and swallowed, speaking with more certainty while still keeping it low enough so that no eavesdroppers could listen in, "Although trust might come a bit more easily if I knew who I was supposed to be trusting, or why they have any interest in helping me at all."

Kira's shoulders visibly relaxed, having at least procured a few minutes before Calypso stopped buying it. But that still wouldn't be lengthy. She seemed irked by the hesitation, and dismissed the inquiry with exactly zero tenderness. "I have neither the time nor the comfort to explain that to you on an open street."
There would come a time and a place for the answers she was offering. That place would be behind closed doors. For now she seemed interested in getting that privacy, even if it strained Calypso's faith. Given the previous line of inquiry, being persuaded without those answers was an unlikely proposition, but she was at least tentatively interested in the salvation Kira was offering. She tightened the screws on Calypso's decision, forcing out a definitive answer in no uncertain terms. "At this corner turn right to stay with me. Go straight and you never see me again, but you are on. your. own."

It was curiosity, naivety, or a dangerous mix of both that made Calypso take the right turn instead of heading straight for the station. She kept her frustration that her questions had been shrugged off to herself and stayed with the stranger, taking some time to memorize her environment and seek out places to bolt to if it turned out that being on her own had been the better idea. The silence was allowing her doubt to creep in, but Calypso wouldn't waste her breath on anymore questions until they have arrived wherever it was that they were going.

Though her patience was strained by the ambiguity, the arduous wait would come to an end soon enough. "Silver car, passenger side. I'll give you what you need."
Getting into a car added a new layer of concern -- certainly not without good reason for that matter -- yet Kira was interested in any venue more private than broad daylight before she divulged the truth Calypso desperately needed to hear.

She was surprised the girl stayed with her around the corner. She half expected her to not bite. Were Kira the one being led along, she very probably would have abandoned ship by now as well. But she was running out of credit to work on. A part of Kira would have still felt responsible for Calypso's fate even if she went her own way. While that part was now firmly all of her, she was grateful she could have the chance to actually do something about it. Kira turned her own way and headed around the rear of the vehicle, entering on the other side to wait on Calypso. It was still not too late for her to bail.

Calypso seized up with hesitation as she stood outside of the passenger side of the car, her hand hovering just above the handle. There was a good chance that getting inside of this car meant certain death. The stranger seemed to imply that she didn't work for the Nazyashi, which could of been a lie, but even if true there was still a chance she then worked for the Awakened. Maybe there was some completely different criminal organization that wanted Calypso dead for something she wasn't even aware that she had done. Alternatively, she could just run away and follow Sloan's instruction, but even then her life wasn't guaranteed, not to mention the possible realities where even if she did survive her life wouldn't be worth living. She swallowed deeply and stepped into the car, effectively giving her future over to a stranger.

"I hope what I need isn't a bullet in the head," said Calypso grimly as she closed the door and sunk into the seat. She turned her head towards Kira and gave her a mild look of annoyance that was unable to completely wipe away the lingering worry on her face. "I did as you asked. Are there any more hoops for me to jump through, or will you tell me what your deal is?"

A little gratitude wouldn't have killed her. Kira said upfront she was there to get her out from between the rock and the hard place between which she was wedged. Takeda Kirido, had Calypso known the mythos behind that name, was not one to delay killing someone when that was the intended goal. Now that Calypso was in a private space, something that seemed quite hazardous to her health, Kira was finally interested in leveling with her. She shuffled herself around to face Calypso in the passenger seat. Yet, she still kept her gaze a bit to the left, impulsively averting any stares at her bad side. "Nazyashi might have warned you about me, which would explain why you seem to be expecting me to shoot you. My name is Takeda Kirido; you can call me Kira. I'm with Jian Covert Operations Group. There's some things I need your help with too but I was telling the truth when I said I was here to help you out of your current bind."

The car doors weren't locked. Kira could instinctively sense the techs back in Ops Command overwatching the operation placing bets on whether or not Calypso ran. She didn't even seem optimistic herself. People from the streets were averse to big corps, and not without reasonable cause. Someone with her authority, her skills, and most importantly her freedom from the shackles of the law, was quite literally a living nightmare. But Calypso hadn't run for her life yet. There was hope. Hope was something Kira hadn't had much of for a long time, and it brought out something more gentle in her. The tough shell of the infamous Yakuza hitman cracked slightly. "I've seen Nazyashi ruin the lives of good people up close. Let me stop that this once. Let me help you ... please."

"Good people," echoed Calypso with a slight huff as she looked out the passenger window. Calypso felt that being purposefully negligent in hopes of making a quick buck instantly qualified her as "not good people", instead throwing her more in a neutral gray zone, but now was neither the time or place to have an argument about morality with someone so kin on saving her bacon. However, the name of Kira's group gave her some pause. It was one Calypso had only heard of in whispered conversations that she wasn't supposed to be listening in on, although from what she could tell they didn't truly even exist. If so, then that meant Kira was either a liar or a some kind of corporate agent, and either way she was deadly dangerous. Calypso decided then and there that it'd be better to have someone like that watching her back instead of gunning for it.

"I...thank you, Miss Kira," said Calypso, turning back towards the woman and giving her a sheepish, apologetic smile. "Clearly all of this has me a bit on edge, but I'm not stupid enough to turned down help when I need it. I'm Calypso, uh, sorry, Callie, although I have a feeling you already know that." She turned to stare back out the window, half expecting a Nazyashi hitman to be staring back at her. "I'll be honest, I'm a bit, I'm a little...overwhelmed, I guess." She looked back at Kira. She didn't wholly trust the woman, but she had no other good options. "So, how do we fix this mess I'm in?"

It was a good question really. The invisible hand of a large criminal organization was quite far reaching. Calypso knew that. Squeezing her this hard and this fast was proof enough. "Hey, don't be ashamed of taking free help. God knows I would be a very different woman had I had what you do..." Kira trailed off.

Kira's eyes flicked away when she spoke. Her eyes betrayed more than had Calypso known every word Kira was leaving out. She eagerly followed with the change of subject, only making it more obvious, "The first step of fixing this is you tell me everything that can get you blackmailed. Friends, loved ones, people who want you dead, secret caches of money or valuables, absolutely everything. I know that's a tall ask. I can put protection in place for pretty much anything but I have to know about it to protect it."

That was asking a lot. More than a lot. That was asking Calypso to trust her life to a corpo slimebag. Fat chance of that. Was she really that afraid of the Consortium? There was no real chance she’d give out every single key to her own destruction.

Calypso felt her stomach drop at Kira's request, a look of frustration and disappointment betraying her feelings before she turned away. Kira wasn't just asking for more than a lot. She was asking for any possible way that Calypso could be hurt. These were things that she wouldn't even tell a close friend, let alone a suspicious stranger offering outcomes that were too good to be true. Even if Kira was going to help her now, if things soured later than the agent would have everything she needed to destroy Calypso's life.

"I don't think you're an idiot," said Calypso, glancing at the car handle, "so don't think of me as one either. We both know there's no way I'll give you all of that. Especially not upfront."

‘If you don’t want to work with me, the door is right there. Your options suck no matter what you do right now.’ Kira held her tongue, but she was thinking it. She couldn’t blame Callie for her wariness but it was still frustrating and downright problematic that she was holding out after Kira had literally raced through the streets, all the way from the number 35 complex just to save Calypso's skin. "Onshirazuna burajā... (ungrateful brat)"

She reverted back to her native tongue briefly, a product of stress from her annoyance. Kira was willing to let her take her chances at surviving a criminal syndicate running her into the ground after that. Yet, she had to consider what Calypso was thinking in the passenger seat, given the demands placed on her. ‘I would have bit the hand that helped too.’ It wasn’t easy, and Kira was asking for a small fortune’s worth of information right off the bat. She removed her headset connecting her back to the geek squad back at Jian, took a deep breath and looked over at her passenger. "How do you think I got these scars?"

"Getting in a car with a stranger?" said Calypso, her dry attempt at humor failing as her voice faltered.

"Hmph, no. Apartment fire." Her detached stare flicked around the vehicle, never meeting Callie’s face or remaining fixed for long. "I remember my dad cooking, going to light the stove ... one minute nothing, and the next there’s just a fireball. I got caught pretty bad."
The surface burns on her left hand weren’t as noticeable as her face, but they were still there, next to two metal digits. She flexed the fingers she had left, like it was bothering her, perhaps from nerve damage she hadn't mentioned. "I don’t remember much after. I came to and I was pinned under two tons of smoking concrete and steel. The building had come down on top of me. Two days of digging later they found my mother’s body in the rubble."
Nerve damage seemed likely now. Between burns and being crushed in the debris, it was a minor miracle she still had a flesh and blood arm left. "I was on the streets within a month once I got out of intensive care. I ended up in the Kyoto Yakuza."

The thought of running came back. She was part of the Consortium, or at least had been. It wasn't clear just what Kira really was or what angle she was playing at. "Five years a loyal Yakuza hitman. The gang was my family when I had nothing. I thought all the honor, the loyalty, the sacrifice meant something."
Kira's hand on the console glove box was shaking, though she seemed oblivious to it. "I found out later they bombed the apartment complex. It was originally a hit to kill a rival, but they knew about me from the beginning. They watched me, and they recruited me, and they never told me. They made me into a ruthless killer, and they were the very people who took everything from me."

She seemed barely able to maintain composure. There could be no doubt she didn't tell this story often, given she was barely keeping it together in front of Calypso. Since she began the tragic story, Kira had yet to look her dead in the eye ... until now. "I know where this path leads. I have been to the place they will send you to. The bottomless despair, the unending rage, none of it meaning a damn thing or changing people being dead."
Kira’s own unending rage was showing hints of itself. It took a moment for her to compose herself enough to conclude, "so when I say that I would give my life to keep you from falling down that black abyss ... you know that I’m telling the truth."
She turned back away from Calypso, carefully controlling her breathing as the tension in every fiber of her being released itself strand by strand. "I can count on one hand the number of people I’ve told that to," she remarked when she reaffixed her earpiece, "it goes without saying that if you breathe a word of that to anyone, I’ll kill you myself."
If she ran now, that would inevitably take care of itself. There seemed no guarantee Kira would even could help, but she seemed willing to confide that much in Calypso. For a supposed ex-hitman, it was an impossible, and uncharacteristically sentimental, position to be caught in: apparently taking the possible death of a stranger so personally.

For a while the only sound in the vehicle was the muffled noises of the outside traffic as Calypso looked down into her lap, her teeth biting down on the inside of her cheek. She hadn't expected Kira to give her such a personal story, and now she was left conflicted—and not just because the ex-hitman had threatened to kill her if she went around spreading tales. The blood was pumping in her head as Calypso closed her eyes and grimaced. If the Consortium thought that Calypso could be turned into some lethal assassin then they had horribly judged her potential; she'd be dead by the second hit, assuming she even made it past the first one. As well, Kira almost seemed desperate to prevent Calypso from going down that path. Was it a means to make amends for the sins of the past, or just simply a way to enact some kind of revenge? Either way, if Kira wanted to play the role of the guardian angel, then Calypso would oblige her.

"I won't tell anyone," said Callie, her voice slow and somber. "What they did to you, that's...that's awful. I know it doesn't mean much coming from me, but I'm sorry. Truly." She sighed and leaned her head back against the rest. It was her turn, truth for a truth. It was only fair.

"Kira, I don't have any money. I hardly have any friends and the ones I do would probably be better off dead anyway. Most of my time I spend tending the bar in some dinky little dive, and in my off hours I run the occasional package through Capri. You ever heard of them? Not necessarily illegal, but certainly in a gray zone. About a month and a half ago I dropped a package off at a skin shop that turned out to be a bomb. I...I didn't know, obviously. Discretion and deniability are what Capri runs off of; I wouldn't have delivered it if I knew. Things didn't end well, needless to say. Now I got every Awakened in the city looking for me, ready to shoot the messenger."

"And to make matters work, that clinic was owned by the Consortium and they want to make up for the financial loss. That's where I come in, now." Calypso swallowed her emotions, and kept on. "They have my mom. Threatened to torture her then turn her over to the Awakened. I don't even know where she is. I don't even know what the fuck I can do." A few tears broke free as Callie turned her head towards Kira. "Her name's Carolina Graham. If you could help me find her then maybe..."

The two sat in uneasy silence for a moment. Kira needed the time for her mind to come back to center. She was not all there yet when callie broke the stillness. She heard what she needed, though, but that didn’t mean it was great news. “It was fifteen years ago; it is what it is and .... seems they’ve gotten more aggressive since I was in.”

Assuming the Consortium’s threats weren’t a hollow promise, there remained few options. They had her pinched hard. The only saving grace was the sheer reach of the corpo resources Kira could call on. Without that there would be effectively nothing anyone could do. “That’s gonna make this difficult. That's a step up from what I knew of their MO. You only have one real option right now and it sucks: hunker down and wait. There’s only a few hours of daylight left so you can either come back to complex with me and rest or head home and turn in for the night.”

She shuffled through her jacket pockets for a card with her personal number on it. “If you’re leaving, take this and call me in the morning, or if you need something from me before then. Whatever the case, all you can do is stall. Buy time with your handler in Bachman & Clench.”
There was exhaustion showing from Kira. She was running on entirely too little sleep and that was unlikely to change in the immediate future given what she was signing up for. “A small bit of silver lining is that they probably think they have you completely locked down. They wouldn’t expect you to have corporate resources at your back, but now you do. They won’t see me coming at first, and that’s what I’m counting on.”

"Thank you," said Calypso quietly as she wiped her eyes and took the card. She didn't know how she could buy time, but she would. Sloan said she'd get in contact with Calypso the moment she was in Ghajotia, and if she wanted to keep her mother alive while Kira pooled her resources then the best option it seemed was to play along with the Consortium. She'd go through the motions of trying to get past the quarantine and then find someway to contact Sloan and drag things out a bit longer. It might as well be her only hope. Calypso opened the car door and stepped out, but before she closed it she leaned back in to speak to Kira one last time.

"Seriously, thank you," said Calypso, the relief showing on her face. There was still a question of whether or not she could truly rely on Kira to keep her word, but even the hope alone helped make her feel better. "There aren't many people left who'd stick their neck out for a stranger these days. Whatever happens, I'm glad we met."

And with that, she closed the door.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the quarantine, Miranda was meandering towards the sewers, cursing her luck, her loyalty to Casio, Arcadia's Gross Domestic Product and the fact that for all the damage her damn eyes were still receiving texts. A message from Callie-cat's antique of a Cellular Phone, asking for her to find her a way out of Ghajotia. A vicious part of her wanted to reply "Walk." but looking at some of the hardware the boys at the borders were carrying, it wasn't bloody likely. An inordinate amount of firearms for a response to a plane crash and chemical spill.
Ghajotia was an interesting place when it came to transportation, almost nobody owned their own Automobile and most of the roads were a bit too narrow and winding for two-way traffic. Hence most people either got around via a bike or a hoverscooter. At least while moving around the neighborhood itself. To get in or out? There was the Railway. Trouble was, operation had been seized. Not that they were shooting up anyone who was trying to Evacuate or anything like that. But ID's were being checked and people with a rap sheet were being pinched. Pretty peaceable, all things considered, but then faced with the choice of choking to death while your skin peeled off and spending a few hours in Lock up, it almost seemed reasonable. Unless you were a career criminal who'd be spending the rest of their natural life in Lock up. Ooor you had recently bombed a skinjob joint and were on the hit list of half of Delcos.
Either way. It wasn't an Option for her, or Callie. At least, not as Passengers.

Ok, I've got a way out but you're going to need a Tie, conductor Hat, White Business Shirt, black Cardigan and a willingness to bullshit a lot of scary men with very very big guns.