Chapter 378
Master Telos ended up doing dresses for all three of us. He really, really wanted to do a tuxedo for Mira, but I managed to convince him to go with dresses. He was resistant at first, but enthusiastically agreed once Luna said something to him that I didn’t quite catch.
The master tailor started with Mira, which left me and the runner sitting off to the side of the room. She was probably going to be the hardest to make a dress for. Although I wouldn’t tell her this, the black tech poking out was kind of ugly. I thought it looked fine since I liked that kind of techno look, but objectively speaking? It didn’t mesh well with the halo and the rest of her.
Hmm… I eyed the Shift ExCore and brought up the schematic to the forefront of my mind. Could I slim it down a bit? The actual connection points for the chrome was ingrained deeply into her skeletal structure to the point Nael couldn’t remove it. The external parts though… I might be able to make some modifications to thin it down? I’d have to think about it later.
”Attendant Failure!” Telos stopped painting and glared at the attendant that almost threw us out of the shop. “You lost count!”
”S-sorry, sir!” The attendant froze mid kowtow, and then started the process back up. He bowed on his knees and slammed his head into the ground in a deep bow. The chemskin was already starting to turn red. “One! I’m sorry! Two! I’m sorry! Three—“
”Haah…” I shook my head and tried to look away. I attempted to wave him off for almost throwing me out so he wouldn’t lose his job, but Telos took that as me being pure or something like that. He was to kowtow 100 times in a row, full force. If he did it too weakly or lost count, he had to start over. Otherwise, if he failed, he’d lose his job.
I felt a little bad watching it happen. I was afraid to speak up, though. Telos might jump up the punishment to 500, and I didn’t think the attendant would survive that many hits to the head. The master tailor was batshit, so there was no telling.
“What’d you hit her with?” I asked Luna quietly. After I told her to infect that woman, I hadn’t heard sense.
“Um.” Luna actually seemed quite interested in the tailor’s painting process, and shot me a side eye when I distracted her. “NightLight… It’s a pretty basic o-one. Everytime she tries to sleep, it’ll flash obnoxious ads on her HUD.”
“Woah.” A shiver went down my spine. I knew just how annoying that could be. When I first got the interface, the Trait selection wouldn’t go away and totally ruined any chance I had at sleep. Only, the woman would have to deal with full on advertisements.
”Y-yeah… I hooked a Daemon to it too. Any Netrunner that tries to fix the virus is in for a nasty surprise.” She shrugged like she hadn’t just ruined the woman’s next month. Or a couple of months if she was unlucky. She was obviously rich to be able to loiter around here, though, so she should be able to get a runner.
Still… when I said to hit her with a nasty virus, I didn’t think it through. Runners were particularly scary, and it was easy to forget that. Against someone with any level of chrome, a good runner was like a curse-wielding Adept. Stronger, even. Their hacks, or what was basically curses, could linger latently in a device or piece of chrome and cause issues for decades.
I pulled out my phone and leaned back into the couch of the… office? Was this an office? Dressing room? I wasn’t quite sure what to call it. “What do you want for an apartment?”
Luna sighed and turned fully away from what was going on in the rest of the room. “Um… s-somewhere safe like my last bunker.”
”Safe…” The safest places wouldn’t be in an apartment. So did she want somewhere like my underground workshop? Off the top of my head, I knew of several spots around the city that could be converted to an apartment with a little work.
She nodded and her eyes glowed blue. A moment later, a set of specifications and dimensions popped up into my HUD. “A-and I need the infrastructure to get a full set up going.”
I pulled out my scrambler to hide our conversation and dropped low into a whisper. That certainly narrowed things down. “How do you feel about inside the roof of a ramen shop?”
Her nose scrunched up. “A-and smell like soy all the time? Pass.”
”Under an abandoned AE3 station? It’s a bit on the edge of town, though.” I ran a hand idly through my hair and looked through my mental map of the city. “I could build you one. It’d take a couple weeks though.”
”Build? Like that workshop of yours?” Her head tilted to the side. “L-looks great, by the way.”
”Thanks.” ‘Course she knew all about that. I came and went enough from it, and it was where I brought my Dragonflies to repair and clean them. It wouldn’t be all that hard for her to keep a connection to one of them. It seemed only Saint wasn’t in the loop about it. “You should drop by sometime.”
”L-looking for opinions on your speakeasy?” She popped up another couple images into my HUD. They were of the speakeasy, but she marked up a couple spots on them with light strips and some aesthetic modifications. “Might help the mood a bit. Have you looked into getting a liquor license and initial inventory yet?”
“Um…” I looked away from the modifications. She actually had some good points, and a surprising eye for aesthetics. “No. Still in the planning phase. I don’t even own the building yet.”
”Right. It’s listed for thirteen million…” She tapped her lip and her eyes shifted to a slightly dimmer shade of blue. They flicked around rapidly like she was reading something on her HUD. “You might be able to work the owner to get it down.”
”You know who owns it?” And the price went up… probably thanks to all the destruction in East End. Land value likely shot up in every other district.
“Please, l-like that kind of info would be hard for me to get.” She sighed and flicked a finger to me.
My HUD flashed, and an image of a middle-aged man in a designer suit popped up. Mickey Mays’s full information showed up a moment later thanks to Luna. He was a self-made real estate guru on the net. While talking about how easy it was to get land and earn passive income, he never seemed to mention the sizable trust fund he had from his deceased parents.
He was actually someone I recognized, funnily enough. He owned several artworks, and was one of the many people to brag in front of Sean back at that art gala months ago. He dodged my list of potential heist targets since his holdings were kept in the Redhook Logistics zone, though.
I read through his entire profile while Luna went back to watching the master tailor work. A plan slowly formed in my mind. This was the kind of parasite that didn’t do much for anyone but himself. He bought buildings, and then let them rot while milking them and the people dwelling in them for all their worth so he could make ‘passive income’. I wouldn’t feel the slightest bit bad about using some more… creative methods to get a deal.
Where should I start though? There was so much info to dig through. He spent more time throwing parties and showing off with displays of wealth than anything else. Reminded me a bit of Ajay from that insurance company that worked with the Savant lab back when I first met Feras.
Not to say he was working with Savants, ‘course. By all means, he looked pretty clean outside of a drug record with the Crusade. And his addiction to hookers. The guy was a sex-fiend to the point of getting, um, specialty chrome. Seemed kind of stupid to me when there were runners on the loose. Imagine getting that hacked.
Mickey Mays was the kind of big spender that I could easily take advantage of if I played my cards right. I’d have to be careful though. I focused on a section of his records. It looked like he paid a sizable protection fee to not only Redhook, but the Jade Fang as well. Enforcers regularly featured in his social media posts.
To begin with, though, I needed a bit more info to really plan things through. “Luna, can you get his bank records?”
The runner froze and stared at me like an idiot. “Y-you want me to hack First International Boswan Bank? Might as well tell me to commit suicide.”
“Nevermind…” Right, I wasn’t thinking that through…
She sighed and her eyes flashed. “I might be able to get his credit card info and track his purchases, maybe. I-I’ll need to fully dive to track something like that across the city, though.”
Which she couldn’t do because she needed help setting everything up. We were back to where we started. “How about a temporary spot for your equipment while we figure out a more permanent location?”
“Whatever you want to do. Y-you’re footing the bill.” She shrugged and hesitated. She looked like she had something on her mind, though was hesitant to say it.
“Don’t beat around the bush.”
”Um…” She shifted uncomfortably in her seat. A model of Mickey popped into my HUD with a spot of chrome on his neck highlighted. “If you can get me jacked into his neuroports, I-I might be able to get what we need without a full dive. I’d need to be there in the flesh, though.”
So we’d need to isolate him. That… maybe I could pose as a hooker or drug-dealer and get close? I had more than enough drugs stashed in my Aether bunker from various places. That didn’t exactly sit well with me, though. I kept to the shadows, and grifting my way into stuff wasn’t my style. Maybe Saint could pull it off?
Actually, that might work. A loose plan formed in the back of my head. I could implicate him in a high-level art heist while I was at it, too. He was the type of guy to live off his passive income without saving from the look of things, so he’d probably jump at the chance to sell a troublesome property for enough quick rayn to get away from the law.
Luna cleared off my HUD, though sent all the info to me on a text message. She nodded to the other side of the room. “Looks like they’re almost done.”
“My muse! Your turn!” The man ecstatically called out to me.
Mira flopped off the chair she’d been sitting on and dragged herself over to the couch. She looked entirely lifeless like she had back in the Savant lab. “Ugh—why didn’t anyone tell me fashion was so painful?”
I lightly patted her on the shoulder while passing by to take the center seat. “Fashion is always painful. Haven’t you been paying attention?”
”No…” She sighed and collapsed onto the couch next to Luna.
”Go easy on me?” I asked Telos and took a seat on the center chair.
”Of course, my precious!”
Telos did not go easy on me… at least, with the actual fitting and designing. I had a feeling he crammed multiple months of work into the short five hour span that he worked on me. There was no way all of that was for one dress considering his level of talent and skill.
He did, however, go easy on my wallet. I was a bit worried about affording the custom stuff. Even the pre-made outfits in Crystal Aesthetics were exclusives that sold for upward of 75,000 rayn. He cut me a sharp deal, though, and I only had to pay for material costs. The tailor said something about being able to work with me once more was his fortune? I didn’t really get it.
They’d be ready in a week from now, which almost perfectly lined up with Mira’s birthday. There was a lot to do between then and now, especially if I wanted to give her the present I had in mind.
— — —
AN: I’m super excited for this next arc. I’ve been wanting to do something like this since i first introduced the speakeasy. I do have a question, though. I asked the patrons about this a while back, but how’d you guys like the request layout for when they went into the Scath Heights? Probably should’ve asked back then after that arc. ^^
If you don’t remember, it was this one with the more clearly defined goals:
| Request - Polar Moon MIA - Complete
-Find Polar Moon (3/4) [75%]
-Takeover Node Towers: (3/3) [100%]
-Ensure the safety of your team [100%]
-Spread Chaos [35%]
-Merc Hunt [3%]
-Mutie Hunt [14%]
-Figure out what went wrong [54%]
-Reward: ??? |