I stand stood in the Alleys of my ghetto 3 hours after my call to Kiera this morning, quietly vaping with my other hand in my hoodie pocket, holding my pistol as I wait for someone to walk up to me to get assigned a new job.
After around 20 minutes of waiting, a beaten looking man approaches me nervously.
"Are you Ms Lockheart..?" He asks as he stands before me.
"Mhm. That's me. Why?" I ask, finding his current state as a possible opportunity for a job.
"Y-yes… I was hoping you could do a job for me. You know, a merc job.." he speaks apprehensively and pained.
"That can be arranged. What did you have in mind?" I ask, kicking off the wall and putting vape away to give him my full attention.
"That's… great. A group of Maelstrom guys jumped me a couple blocks down from here and demanded 10,000 eddies and my car or they were gonna kill me and take it themselves. I- I dunno where they are now but since you're a Netrunner I hoped you could use your skills to find them and get my stuff back. I- I promise I'll pay you well.." he explains, looking around with paranoia as he outlines what happens and what he wants.
"You care what state the guys find themselves in after I acquire your stuff?" I question as he looks to me with a deadpanned expression.
"Yeah, fair enough; dumb question. Okay, I can get you your stuff back. How much were you thinkin' of paying me?" I query before he speaks again.
"Will 25 hundred suffice..?" He asks which I nod in agreement to, tilting my head to the side gently for a momen before back to normal.
"Sounds good. Could I have your OS info so I can contact you when I have your stuff?" I look to him expectantly, my eyes lit up light pink as I scroll my OS contact info.
"Y-yes of course. Daniel Reynes… my number is 1 027895440" he saysc saving the contact before nodding to him respectfully.
"I'll have your stuff in a couple hours. Sound good?" I comment and he responds with a nod before.
"Okay, have a good rest of your day." I say before walking to the co-ordinates he sent over in a message to where he was robbed.
Upon walking for about 20 minutes, I arrive at a standard looking area of Little China in Watson, walking to an alley where he was robbed by a couple Maelstrom gang members.
I begin searching for an electrical box or camera system, my eyes bright neon pink as I begin scanning my surroundings with my OS and my light blue hoodie up.
I end up finding a camera on the side of one of the buildings and begin taking control of it with my Cyberdeck, patching me through to the Camera system, displaying it on the Cornea of my robotic eyes, playing back the footage at the time of the incident.
Unfortunately however, the footage Is out of view. The incident happened in an alley so the camera's field of view could not reach behind the corner. But there's a brief couple of frames where 12 heavy Cyberware implanted gang members, holding various weapons and robotic systems on their face such as 8 glowing red optical Cyberware implants, Gorilla arms and more.
Of course. Just my luck." I mutter as I continue leaning against the wall, moving the footage to the side on my Cornea before patching into the main network system of this area of Little Chiba, frowning a little as I begin scrolling lines of code on 2 different new tabs and attenpting to decypher and breach the Subnet.
Whilst in the process of this though, I hear a man and a woman in NCPD uniform call over and walk up to me as i'm busy breaching the subnet.
"Officers. How can I help you?" I speak, mentally rolling my eyes as I remain focused on decyphering the code and breach the subnet.
"Sorry to bother you ma'am but I couldn't help but notice you loitering over here with your hood up. Are you waiting for someone or?" He questions, probably suspicious as I lean against the wall here with my hood up.
"Yeah. I'm waiting for- uh…. The fuck..?" I mutter a curse quietly as I get locked out of the system, realising they have ICE measures in place.
"Who the hell-?" I mumble in questioning of why they have ICE measures on such a random network.
"Sorry, we didn't catch that. Could you repeat please?" The woman asks curiously.
"Uh… sorry, yeah. Just a guy I know sent a text to me, apparently he's cancelling tonight's date because he has to go to his sister's party. I don't see why I'm not invited but y'know; it's whatevs." I lie to them as I begin breaching the thankfully weak ICE systems, providing a quick defence before returning to their line of questioning.
"I'm waiting for my friend, her name's Kiera. We're supposed to get coffee at this new cafè just down town but she's running late because she forgot her bag. I just want one person with some decent time management sometimes, ya know?" I give a convincing fake laugh but the officers don't look convinced.
"You just said that you had a date cancelled by your boyfriend." He responds with a suspicious raised eyebrow, crossing his arms as he points out the contradiction I just created through my lies.
"Y-yeah well the date isn't- wasn't now, It's at 8 tonight. I'm waiting for Kiera to go to the café with now." I answer, quickly solving the contradiction to lower suspicion again.
"Ah. I see. Well, I hope you're not waiting for much longer. And I'm sorry to hear about the date being cancelled." The man nods respectfully.
"Nah, don't be. Bastard cheated on me, was gonna leave 'im anyways. He's just like "ooh one more chance, I'll change" and he blew it again. Shocker, right? I'm too optimistic for my own good." I roll my eyes, now finally having breached the ICE system and scrolling through available connected devices in the Local Area Network.
"I see. Well have a nice day regardless." He nods once more before walking off with his colleague.
"Thank you officer. Take care." I respond neutrally as I continue to scan the devices, coming across a camera in the network with a view of the road through a traffic light. The footage shows a maelstrom member driving a car. I scan the licence plate before running it through a basic NCPD database and revealing the car model and owner which belongs to one Danial Reynes.
"Bingo. Got you now fuckers." I comment with a growing smirk, tracing the car back a warehouse near a highway using a triangulation software an hour away from my location; closing the tabs open on my OS and travelling to the location.