[04/2032]
I stepped around the corner to meet Calum for our regular training session. It had been going well, and against my better judgment, he'd grown on me—like moss or fungus.
Originally I was going to teach him the bare minimum, but when I actually started his excitement and enthusiasm won me over. He had been shy at first, but once we got going, he was just so keen to learn and put his best in every time, I didn’t have the heart to lead him wrong. I was planning to leave the yogang anyway.
I had given him most of the material I'd acquired over the years, which he'd slowly been working through. Today would be interesting though.
Reaching Calum, I smiled, "Ready?"
"Yo! Yeah, I could barely sleep last night!"
Chuckling, I moved over to the sofas. "Okay then, let’s get settled and then we can start the dive." The girls were already there, working on their own things. Or Nat was, Jess and Kate were watching some brain-rotting anime. The high-pitched voices set my teeth on edge.
We'd already moved on the mooks that had been there before. They tried to sell to us, but a look from Nat was enough to move them on. Eli would have sorted them out before, but with how things stood, more of the gang were using.
I shook my head and made sure Calum had my undivided attention as he set himself up. I nodded approvingly when he followed the advise from last time. Good. He had taken my advice seriously.
"Right, first off then. The scan on your deck was rubbish. Have you installed the one I gave you? Good, in that case, scan and then go into our architecture using the turrets as an entry point. Just like we practised."
Diving in myself, I used my cybereyes to follow him. I had kept much the same optical upgrades when I swapped over.
Swapping over to the new had required an adjustment period. More so than I'd been expecting. But once I had my settings the way I wanted, things were pretty smooth, and I was well used to it by now. The left eye swapped to only show cyberspace, while the right partially showed it. I could make out enough to see what was going on around me, but the eyes would swap if I needed to focus on real space. With the left eye fully flipping to real space and the right staying with both.
Diving in, I moved through the architecture. I was the admin so I had complete control, allowing me to walk right into it through the front door, so to speak.
It was a tiny system, only made up of the turrets, 2 cameras and a connection to the citinet. One of the cheapest out there and with limited room for defences. In fact, it only had one ICE, a [Bloodhound]. Which was a detection and alarm programme, with an icon of… you guessed it, a bloodhound.
Go figure.
But even that was more than Billy wanted to pay, and it took a lot of persuading to get it. Only local gang territory disputes saw him cave. And it was begrudgingly at that.
Reaching the datawall I waited. Moments later, Calum's avatar popped up in front of me, looking a bit like him… if you squinted… really squinted. He looked humaniod at least.
Having enough awareness around me, I watched as Jess moved into position. Calum did not. Not that I expected him to, it was hard enough to start with, without having to paying attention to your surroundings as well.
"I know we have covered this, but let's quickly go over it one more time." I went over the basics of running through it one last time. "Now the first thing you need to practice is your awareness, both in the net and in the real world. Focus back into meat space for a sec." I said, smirking. Looking forward to his reaction.
I was not disappointed.
Grumbling Calum did then he jerked back screaming. In both cyberspace and realspace. Another thing I would need to train him out of. It took a lot of practice separating the 2, but you couldn't accidentally fire your gun in realspace because of an action in cyberspace. Or vice versa. It had recently gotten much easier for me with the neural bridge, allowing me to easily separate the 2.
When Calum had calmed down, not that I blame him, opening your eye and seeing Jess less than a centimetre from your face with a manic grin would be enough to make anyone jump, I got everything back on track. Following him as he slowly made his way through the architecture until we came across the turret node.
I had allowed him to practice on the cameras, taking control of them and turning them off, with and without the correct programs.
"Okay, rez your [Killer II] and I will do the same. Now attack." Stepping back, I watched the ICE clash between us. Mine quickly getting the upper hand and then winning not long after. "We will go a few more rounds, rerez your ICE."
Even with my ICE partially damaged from the previous fight, it still handily won. We did the exercise a few more times (me winning each time) before Calum had had enough.
He flopped back dramatically onto the sofa. "Why is yours so much stronger than mine? I even have some cyber boosters that make netrunning easier! Did you give me a borked program?" He said, mock frowning suspiciously at me.
I laughed at that. I sent him the section to reread, referencing what the problem was. "Reread that. It will explain it better, but briefly. Think about it. The cyberworld is data given form. Even your knowledge can affect cyberspace. The saying knowledge is power is a literal fact when in cyberspace. The more you know about your ICE, the better. I know these inside and out. I know their strengths, their weaknesses, and so much more. This means that my program is fighting more effectively, hitting yours weak points and protecting itself better. But more than that, it just performs better."
Calum still had an unconvinced look on his face. How to put it so he would understand? "Think of it this way. 2 shooters trying to do a long range shot in windy conditions. One is a gonk with limited experience. He will miss 9 times out of 10. He won't practice to get better so the only way to improve is to get better gear, be that cyberware or a better gun and scope.
Now the other guy is a professional shooter. He knows what he is doing, but more than that, he knows his gun. How much it kicks when fired, or that the bullets curve slightly to the right. He knows how to compensate for the wind and will hit the mark 9 times out of 10.
"Does that make more sense?" I hoped so. I was not sure how else to explain it. The saying kinda did it all for you. Knowledge is power. The more time I spent on the net, the more relevant it became.
I wasn’t sure how else to explain it.
What I didn’t tell him was that there came a point when better equipment was just too much to overcome, which was why most corpo netrunners were better. They just had better ICE and decks than most deckheads on the street.
"Okay so you have seen ICE battles, now derez yours and I am going to get mine to attack you directly." Hearing this Calum shot me a look. "Don’t worry, it won't kill you."
Taking a deep breath, Calum found his backbone and he straightened up. Taking a deep breath, he nodded. I rezed the ICE and sent it over. It crashed into a thick wall of glowing squares around Calum's avatar.
"As you can see, that was your decks datawalls. The stronger that is, the stronger your avatar's defences are. That will also change how the wall might look. For instance, more tightly packed squares indicate a stronger datawall. However I would always have that as the last line of defence. Anti-system programs will cut through that projection like it is nothing. Now for the bit I know you have been looking forward to." I said, smirking.
I willed my ICE to keep attacking until the shield failed. "You are now defenceless; anything that hits you will cause real damage." Before he could chicken out, I had the ICE swipe one last time, hitting his avatar directly. It shivered but stayed in the net.
Cancelling my ICE I approached him. "How you feeling?"
His head was in his hands, groaning. "I have a killer headache."
Grimacing in sympathy, I nodded. "Yeah that’s normal. The more you get hit, the worse it will be until it shorts your interface, pulling you from the net. Or at least this program does. You never know what someone might have hidden in their code. It might just look like an innocent [killer II], but have something far more malicious under it, so when it hits you, that will take effect. Like the cascade which would crash your deck. Last one."
Waiting for him to focus once more I sent a [deckKRASH] at him, which, as the name suggested, promptly crashed his deck. It was a fairly weak ICE, so it only caused some sparks to fly off the deck and for it to shut down, its internal fuse blown.
A nastier program might brisk it entirely and even the programmes attached to it. Which might set you back 10000s of eddies. Not good, not to mention fucking with your nerves. Have it happen enough, and it could cause permanent damage.
Daniel even mentioned this could lead to Cyberpsychosis, although that was only anecdotally.
I showed him how to check his deck and other maintenance before diving back in and training in cyberspace once more.
---
Then came the beginning of the end for our work with the firm. I was just getting ready to go to the Forge when I got a message for a gig from Adrian. It was a small data gathering job that I could take Calum on to get him some practice.
We had been on a few already, but this was the largest so far. More importantly, this came from Billy.
Gathering round his room, he started to loudly explain the job "… Armstrong clan are coming out on top of the turf war. With the Wildz smashed back, their turf is up for grabs. We have a gig to hit some of their warehouses, yeah. Go get your shit. I will give the deets to those who need it."
With his speech done, he stomped away, joining a clique that had gathered around him. It had formed over the months since Eli's death, but when the new guy arrived, it got so much worse. They were all chrome jocks, each trying to outdo the others with the chrome they had.
Neil was the worst of the lot. A mean thug, with a violent streak a mile wide. But he spoke Billy's language and had quickly meshed with the developing culture in the gang. They had apparently met at some rave or blood sport game. Either way, we kept well clear of the unstable psychopath.
I had hoped the Armstrong gang would bring him under control, but if anything, they were using him and us by association as a beat stick. Pointing us at the biggest targets.
As was the norm now, I was not one of those people who needed to know and had to get the deets from Calum.
With a slight sinking feeling, I realised this was likely one of the last jobs I would do as a netrunner for the gang. Previously, Calum had been shadowing me, then me shadowing him. This time, I was to leave it all to him and only step in if needed. When he succeeded as I knew he would… or he better had, I was sure he would fully take over.
The gig was an easy one really. We posted up around the corner, covered by the girls. Kate was up with Nat to help if it was needed. I brought slightly different ICE this time. Focused on combat rather than stealth and followed Calam in.
I would box his ears if he didn’t do this clean; this should be a doddle for him.
I taught him well after all.
I was grinning, pleased by the time he was done. He'd moved through the architecture with a confident ease. He sent off the message giving the go-ahead to Billy and we both fully left cyberspace. With cyberspace falling away and realspace coming back into focus, I gave his shoulder a firm squeeze. "Ace work today Calum. I'm glad you didn’t bork this up. It would have been an insult to my teaching if you had." I said, nudging him slightly. "But seriously, I'm proud."
His face lit up, with his cheeks flushing. With a surprisingly emotional voice, he gave me a big hug. "Thanks for all your help, and I am really sorry about taking your biz."
Laughing, I patted him on the back before stepping back. "As I have said a million times. Better you than some other mook. Just keep practising what I have taught you and you will go far. And remember."
"I know, I know. Be careful." He said, rolling his eyes.
"And don’t you forget it."
Later that night, curled up in bed, I made sure Kate was asleep before prodding the girls. "I think that is the last job I will see. I checked with Adrian and you will still be guarding Calum, so we will still be able to stay here, but our income will drop massively. I don’t think we will have enough money to pay for the Forge and stuff going forward. Even with my ripperdoc stuff."
"What about Eli's stash?" Jess asked.
"I want to keep that for our new home. Who knows what it will cost us?"
"I'm sure it won't be that much." Nat said, her voice dripping in sarcasm. "But yeah, we all knew this was inevitable. I contacted Darrel and he's willing to give us a few small jobs. Intel gathering mostly, so perfect for us."
I gave her a squeeze. "Thanks for doing that for me. When do we have our first one?"
"Next week, he is just getting the last bits needed for it. But it should just be a hacking gig. Some of the other ones he mentioned would be physical theft, so Jess would need to go in and get it."
Smiling slightly as I saw Jess do a silent dance, hampered by Kate clinging to her. "Good, that should keep us going. But I think we should really start looking for a new place to stay. I know we kind of started, but I think it is important now."
"You mean fully leave the gang?" Jess whispered.
"We have spoken about it, but I think it is time to pull the trigger. There is no real reason to stay much longer."
"But where would we go, I mean, would the Steeles take us in? But then we would always be on the move," Nat said, brightening briefly at the thought of staying with Lilly.
"That is a last resort I think. I want us to check out the area Eli mentioned. There should be lots of empty buildings there. If we don’t find anything over there, then yeah, I can chat to the Steeles. Plan?"
"Plan." They both agreed.
----
I was surprisingly calm for our first gig alone. I was expecting to feel more nervous, but I suppose Billy's constant violent jobs were good for something.
I was looking forward to this. Getting back to our roots, so to speak.
"Okay here we are, everyone to their places." Nat said as we came to a small, closed-off warehouse. A large wire fence surrounded it with alert armed guards patrolling, and actually well trained cylons (corpo security), not the usual uninterested security.
I was thankful we weren't assaulting it. We wouldn’t win. Even if the rest of the gang got involved, I was doubtful. It was a different tier of gig than the firm did. These were professional security and it showed.
I moved around the corner so I was out of sight of the front cameras and guards, then followed the fence around until I came to an alley we had scouted earlier. It gave me good cover while breaching. Once I reached my cover, Jess next to me, I pulled out my deck and ran a scan. I smiled. Exactly as planned, just above me was my entry point.
The alley also had a good exit path, which we had mapped as part of our scouting we had done over the last few days.
'Aden: Diving', I sent over our agents and connected to the automatic emergency light above me.
A perfect place to enter.
As I initiated the dive, the real world faded, and a world of neon grids lit up, the world of cyberspace filling my vision.
First to breach into the system. Grinning, I started a new ICE I made just for this gig.
While the [Termite] was good, it was nowhere near strong enough to get through the outer datawalls of stronger architectures. This is where my new ICE came in, called [Worm], its icon, funny enough, was a gold metal robotic worm, with a glowing green neon eye.
It was based on others on the market, only heavily modified as all my ICE were by this stage.
While the ICE was slower at getting through datawalls, it could get through magnitudes stronger ones. However, that slower entry almost guaranteed a quiet entrance to the architecture. While the ICE slipped through the datawall, starting to make an entrance, I rezed the rest of my ICE. First being my trusty [shield], just in case.
I wouldn't need my [Killer II] quite yet and if things went to plan, I wouldn’t at all. I was trying to sneak inside after all, and a big stompy cyborg limits that somewhat. Instead, next up was [Invisibility II].
It had the same name, but was several times stronger than the original. It did take up twice the space on my deck.
The sheer black wall in front of me shivered and rippled, before my trusty worm poked its head out, leaving a gap for me to slip through. Stepping into the first node I froze. A short, bulky figure, in metal armour with spikes sticking out, sat in my way. Its glowing visor above a snarling canine jaw gave the program's identity away.
A [Bulldog].
An alarm ICE, meant to detect entry and then alert the rest of the net. Not the strongest, my [Killer II] would be able to destroy it in short order. But not before it sounded the alarm. I could try to sneak past it, but that came with its own risks.
My second new ICE should help with that. [Muffle] could cut the connection an ICE had to its net, stopping its alarm. I just had to be quick.
The rest of the node was empty, so there was nothing to access within it and was just a defensive node.
Creeping as close as I dared, I rezed my [Killer II] and sent it charging forward. With my other hand, I rezed [Muffle], a black shadow cloaking the [Bulldog] and clamping its mouth shut in a muzzle.
My heart was pounding away by now, but I was loving every second of it. The challenge—testing my ICE against others and showing I was better.
I only had a few seconds before the ICE broke free. But that should be enough.
I couldn’t let it retreat to buy time, so shunted behind it and used my shield program to block its path.
I even pushed with the shield spell a few times, knocking it off balance, allowing my katana-wielding cyborg to make short work of it.
It tried to leap away and open its mouth to make a loud barking noise but the [Muffle] held.
The [Muffle] frayed, before starting to fade when a final slash of the katana did it, and the ICE became a pixilated pile on the floor. I paused listening and grinned when I knew I was undiscovered.
Reactivating my [Invisibility]—it had dropped when I rezed the [Killer II] and [Muffle], and once more crept forward to the passage leading to the next node.
Well shit, that’s not great.
A huge black metal wolf, complete with glowing white eyes and fire covering its body. A [Hellhound].
A netrunner killer. This was an anti-personnel program at its finest. Designed and built to not just kill runners but chase them down. When the Net was global, they would relentlessly hunt them across it until they found their target or were called back. They couldn’t do that now of course, but either way, it was far more than I could handle.
Even if I swapped to my assault ICE, I doubted I’d even scratch it.
Should I back out? I shook my head, no, I should be able to do this. It had worse senses than the [Bulldog].
Entering the node, I stayed far from the hulking beast curled up in the centre of the room. Again, the node was empty, so nothing to interact with in the node. Once I was fully in the node, I started a new program I had been working on.
I called it [Misty Steps]. Once activated, a light mist seeped from me, wafting through the room. It had the same look as something you might find in the morning before being burned off by the sun. This mist slowly drifted about until it covered the floor of the whole node. The only exception was the area around the hellhound.
My [Misty Steps] was an incredibly niche programme. It allowed me to teleport anywhere within the mist. That, combined with my still active invisibility ICE should see me through the node.
Its drawback was two-fold. It was very obvious, so it had to avoid other ICE, for example the [Bulldog] would have noticed it and sounded the alarm. It was also incredibly fragile and would disperse with even the slightest attack. Not to mention it was also slow to fill the node, so I guess it was actually threefold.
Only when the whole room was covered did I start to move. The room needed to be covered for it to work and that could take some time.
With the mist covering the node, I stepped through it, appearing past the [Hellhound] and next to the gate to the next node. When I appeared, I glanced back nervously at the [Hellhound] before sighing in relief. It still slumbered.
Even past it, the risk wasn’t over. Sneaking past this Black ICE was a double-edged sword. Yes, I was past it, but now it was behind me and the only way out was through it. So if for any reason, I needed to leave in a hurry or my system deck crashed forcing me out of the architecture, the [Hellhound] would have free rein to attack me on the way past.
Not to mention, if the alarm sounded, it would track me down from the back. Putting me between a rock and a hard place.
If you had a strong enough datawall it should be no problem, but if you were retreating because you were losing a fight and your datawalls were damaged or even down, the hellhound might well kill you on the way past.
So I would need to be doubly sure not to set any alarms off. Not that I planned to anyway, so the point was kind of moot. Either way, my datawall was most certainly not up to tanking a [Hellhound].
Into the next node.
Perfect. This node had what I was looking for. Or at least looking more likely. There was no programme guarding the room, just walls of filing cabinets indicating there was data stored here. Booting up my [BackupTDM], I got to work sifting through the data until I hopefully found what I was looking for.
This made it sound like a slow, tedious job, but on the net I could sift through the data at lightning speed, far faster than in the real world. The net moved at the speed of light, with the main limiting factor being that of the runner. So the faster you could think, the more you could do, be that reacting to things or going through data. There was always a limiting factor, either the person or the deck they used.
In my case it was the deck. I felt my cybermodem straining to keep up with me, but could not push it any further or risk it overheating and crashing, forcing me from the net.
In next to no time, I had the information I needed. However while I was sifting through the data, I stumbled across a few traces that all might not be as it seemed.
My task was to find proof of who was responsible for a chemical leak hurting a lot of people. These people wanted to know who was responsible, so they could pay them a visit and express their discontent with gratuitous bodily harm.
Biting my lip I decided to go a bit deeper to see if I could find any more information and confirm or deny my suspicions that the gonk everyone thought it was, was actually a scapegoat.
The next few nodes were uninteresting, having some weak attack programs that I just slid past and in another one, there was a terminal that would allow me to control whatever it connected to, likely cameras from its icon. As I was not interested in that, I ignored it and carried on until I found the node I needed. There was not a lot of data, but enough to clearly show that the corpo warned everyone about the possibility of a leak.
He was promptly ignored, as it would cost too much to search and repair it. They calculated it was cheaper to pay for damages than fix the problem. Got to love corporations.
With the names of the corpos that were actually responsible, I made my way out, sneaking back the way I came.
Vision snapping back to the meat space, I got up, brushing myself off as I did. "I'm out. I’ve got the data, let's delta." I popped the shard from my chipware socket, lining my neck, and slotted it in my reinforced storage container before tucking it into a secure inner pocket.
Meeting up with Kate and Nat, we all left as one in a different direction than we came in. No point making it easy if anyone tried to follow us.
Jess kept an eye out to make sure we were not being followed, even circling back and using a few tricks Daniel had taught us, before we all relaxed in the clear and headed home.
I needed to do a bit of tidying up of the data and then encrypting it with a special algorithm that I had agreed with Darrel beforehand.
'Aden: Here is the data, looks like your suspect was a scapegoat. I have attached the names of those really responsible and all the proof I found.'
I only got the message thanking me and that he would get back when they had gone over the data.
Not surprising, as this was the first time we had worked for him, so I assume he wanted to cross his T’s and dot his I’s before going any further.
Hopefully going above and beyond would get us into his good books and get us more gigs from him. We did get some looks when we came home still on the high from the successful gig. But we ignored them and went to our hidey-hole.
Getting everyone settled, Nat and Jess perched on our mattress and Kate on the chair, I pulled out our sweets, gummy bears this time, that I had hidden for just this occasion.
I straightened, making sure to keep them hidden. "Okay I just want to say how ace everyone was. Our first proper gig. The first of many. But I have something to celebrate. Everyone, close your eyes. Yes, that means you Kate, I can see you peeking. Okay now everyone hold out a hand, palm open."
I placed two sweats into each hand and sat back down. "Okay you can open them." I grinned, pleased as the girls saw them and started to squeal happily before digging in.