Tripwires

28/02/84

The cramped, lampless room was a geek's wet dream. Its only furniture was a worn, looted office chair and a simple table, on top of which was stacked a countless array of computers, storage devices, Gridstream attunement units, encrypters, decrypters, amplifiers and racks of components hard to distinguish. Almost everything was heavily modified and customised with wires running haphazardly from device to another. Scattered around were empty energy ammo clips, energy drink cans and outdated or malfunctioned equipment that had not been bothered to throw away. The tiny room was an utter chaos.
A bright, flickering holoscreen was suspended in the air, spanning 180 degrees in width, and it illuminated the visor-covered face of a short woman with sloppily cut flaxen hair. An elaborate datapad was strapped to her left forearm, wired to one of the computers, with another set of cords running into the visor.

Milly entered a line of text into a field on the holoscreen.
"I can get you 20 units immediately. I need half the payment in advance to cover expenses and for reliability, send 15 million credits to the account number below and we'll set up a secure location for a meeting."
It was routine. Dual-encrypt anonymous bank account code, attach, run through scrambler, make it look like a run-of-the-mill error message or a failed file transfer's artifacts floating around on the Gridwaves. Impossible to trace to the sender and even harder to decrypt into anything readable. Send away to client.

She revved her hoverbike at the front yard and strapped the helmet on, flipping down the shielded visor and speeding down the road, faux leather crop jacket fluttering in the warm Newland night's breeze. A sharp turn around the corner and into the Whom-Pah, and a split second later she manifested on Borealis main street, parking her bike as discreetly as feasible in the mouth of a small alley.

Newland.

"What were you doing out this late, luv?"
Milly stepped into the living room and threw the jacket at the coatrack, missing, as she leaned over the couch to peck a kiss on Agrestus's cheek, doing her hardest to make the package under her arm look less su****ious.
"Fetched take-away, which do you want, chili bronto stir-fry or chirop egg noodles?", she quipped as she casually tossed the take-away bag beside him and trotted to her own inner sanctum, leaving her biking helmet on the already cluttered table and stashing the package into a small cabinet under the table, locking it shut with a passcode.
Catastrophe averted.

"Payment sent. Deliver them to the shacks downhill from the Borealis dish at 03.00 in the night in two days."
Or so she thought.

Previously...

"Yes... most of his cybernetics are still functioning..."
"No, sir, doing that would have severe impli-"
"..Understood, sir."

The engineer left the newly refurbished office clutching a datapad tightly. He didn't feel too good about the move. He had considered leaving the department, but he knew far too much about possible weaknesses to make that a viable choice. He'd have to live with it, or face the darker side of rehabilitation.

The summon to the head office had been a rather stealthy one. There couldn't be any risks for the new directives to slip out. The gridnet site had been silent for the duration of the change, to prevent any curious eyes getting any ideas.

Arriving at his destination, the engineer opened one of the many boxes lying in the corridor to confirm the contents were correct. A black, stylish uniform lay inside, accompanied by a small note.

"Omni-Tek is your friend."