Chapter 17: Ritz Bar
Judy's eyes remained locked on the chaotic mess dancing across her monitor. Lines of corrupted footage, glitchy neural feedback, and fractured sound loops flickered in rapid succession. The braindance wasn't just messy—it felt alive, hostile even. And for someone as seasoned as Judy, that was saying something. Her brows furrowed deeper with every passing second, the glow of distorted data reflecting in her lenses.
Arthur leaned forward from his chair, cigarette slowly burning between his fingers, studying her reaction. "That bad?"
"No," Judy muttered, not tearing her gaze from the screen. "That important. You're lucky you didn't try decrypting this crap yourself. This isn't just combat BD footage—it's layered with corporate-grade ICE, fragments of the Blackwall, encrypted Arasaka fingerprints... and something else I can't quite identify."
Arthur's exhale came slow. "Something else?"
Judy hesitated before finally pushing her chair back and swiveling to face him. "This BD wasn't just recorded passively. It wasn't captured by accident. Your cyberpsycho? He was broadcasting. This... this was meant to be seen—but not by people like you or me."
Arthur's expression tightened. "Broadcasting what?"
She tapped a few keys, freezing a corrupted frame. A dark, narrow corridor appeared—mostly empty. But tucked into the shadows, faint and almost ethereal, stood a distorted figure. No identifiable face. No metadata. No timestamp. No reflection.
Arthur leaned in. "The hell is that?"
"That," Judy said, her voice low, "is someone—or something—watching your philosopher friend. Whoever they were, they used his meltdown as a distraction. They weren't just observing—they were testing. Watching how long it took MaxTac to show up. Gauging response time."