“I assume it didn’t go as you imagined?” the man asked. If he was angry, he did a good job of masking it as always.
“Honestly, not at all,” he admitted and leaned back in his chair with a smile. “But I haven’t had that much fun in such a long time. I wonder if all the Nexus students are like that.”
“Did you hold back, Dario?” his superior asked. “You did the right thing to destroy the facility if it came to that, but if it could have been avoided—”
“I played too much, I’ll admit to that.” He nodded and took a panatela cigar from a small golden box beside the pad. “Will you finally pull the trigger on the bomb in this ship?”
Merrick raised an eyebrow before he lowered his head and smirked. “So you discovered it, then?”
“The day you gave me this ship,” he confirmed and cut into the tip with a deft motion. “I thought it would be rude to remove it.”
“Always the gentleman,” the other man muttered. He sighed and shook his head. “I disassembled the trigger a long time ago, but I regret it somewhat now that we’ve lost two facilities.”
“Two?” Dario asked and lit the cigar.
“The one we had near Mirai has been compromised. Police are closing in as we speak,” he explained. “I assume they were able to access and remove the data?”
“I didn’t realize we had data on other facilities stored there,” Dario stated calmly and exhaled a trail of smoke. “I was occupied with Kaiden and Chiyo. Yvette was responsible for the others.”
“And where is she now?” his boss asked.
“Not with us, unfortunately.”
“I see.” Merrick closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths. “We have many accomplishments and victories and we’ve already made up for the few losses. But Kaiden has disrupted two important operations now. We’ll need to deal with him, that EI be damned.”
“Wow, you must be quite angry,” he commented and twirled the cigar in his hand.
The leader rested his chin on his hand. “I was able to find breaches in some of the systems before the meltdown. But there shouldn’t have been any information that was helpful to them in those devices.”
“Perhaps they realized that they could have been monitored and their activities reported and so used different methods. The whole facility was automated, after all,” he pointed out.
“Possibly. We’ll need to make the proper changes to combat this in the future. I doubt we’ll be able to work as effectively from the shadows from now on.”
“Are you growing paranoid now, sir?” he teased.
“I’m always cautious, Dario.” Merrick gave him a stern look. “When you return, get healed up and ready to move as soon as you can.”
“I can go right now if you wish,” Dario offered and took another puff.
“Have you ever heard the phrase ‘the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak?’”
He snickered. “In very specific circumstances, yes.”
“You need to recover before I send you off again. Eagerness means nothing when strength cannot back it up.”
“There you go again with those fancy words,” he countered. “I’ll return soon and be ready by tomorrow night.”
“Understood. I look forward to it, Dario.” Merrick stated crisply and signed off.
Dario stuck the cigar in his mouth and leaned back. They were already making use of the drive Yvette had stored data on. That was quick. Hopefully, Kaiden would find his way to him soon or would become enough of a bother that he was sent after him again. He wanted another dance.
“Thank you, Professor,” Chiyo said with a bow as she handed the Genesis device back to him.
“My, this thing is banged up,” Laurie commented cheerfully. “I’ll have to reinforce the internals and make a harder shell.”
“My apologies. This mission became much more chaotic than I thought it would,” she stated and stiffened.
He cast a bemused grin at Kaiden. “Considering your company, I’m surprised it returned intact.”
“Cute, Prof,” the ace muttered and took a sip of the wine he’d been given. “Not bad.”
The professor looked back at Chiyo, his eyes narrowed. “Were you able to find what you needed?”
“I was able to find some information on the group that had targeted my father's company—or developing the golems, at least,” she explained as she retrieved the drive they’d recovered from the assassin and handed it to him.
“Another drive?” he asked and examined it casually. “At least this one looks normal.”
“I think you’ll like what’s on it,” Kaiden stated. “It proves you’re not a crazy person. At least with your AO theory.”
Laurie almost fell out of his chair with excitement. He immediately plugged the device into his console. “This has information on the organization?”
“Bits and pieces,” Chiyo clarified. “It’s only mentioned in a few places. This was recovered from an assassin who worked briefly for them. She said the group referred to themselves as the Arbiter Organization.”
“Aurora, go through everything,” Laurie commanded.
“At once, sir.”
The professor reached for his pad. “I need to contact Sasha immediately.”
“I heard, Professor.” The commander spoke from behind them and Kaiden almost spilled his wine in surprise.
“How do you move that quietly?” he asked and set the glass carefully on the desk.
“Hard work,” he replied and turned to Chiyo. “So, both of the free students are here.”
“Free students?” Kaiden asked.
“As in you have no contract,” Sasha stated. He strode behind Laurie’s desk and peered at the monitor.
“No contract? I’m still contracted, sir,” she protested, her expression confused.
“I assumed you hadn’t heard the news as you’ve just returned. That was a way to transition into it—call it subtle guiding.” He turned his attention to her. “The Academy received a rather large contribution from the Mirai Corporation.”
The ace glanced at his friend, whose eyes widened. “Mirai? What did they send?”
“A rather large contribution. I can’t go into more details than that, but I can say that a board member fainted,” he said dryly. “Along with it was a message stating that whatever funds necessary were to be set aside to pay for Chiyo Kana’s contract.” The commander took a tablet out and slid it across the table. “There is something personal for you as well.”
Chiyo picked the tablet up, read it slowly, and placed a hand on her lips as tears began to form. She wiped them away quickly.
“Congratulations, Chiyo,” Sasha said quietly. “And thank you to both of you for bringing this to our attention. You don’t need to trouble yourselves with this anymore.”
“Oh, you can’t give us that treatment,” Kaiden warned and stood abruptly. “We already decided that we’ll take these guys on as well.”
“Kaiden, this isn’t a simple gig,” the professor pleaded. “This could lead to—”
“A big war or something? Maybe, but you know what happens when I leave loose ends,” he retorted. “I don’t think they know we have all this info. We can strike before they have a chance to finish whatever they are trying to do.”
“Even with this information, it will take a long while before we can take the proper measures,” the commander explained. “For a thorough investigation, we may have to get the council involved.”
“You can do whatever, but Chiyo and I have a copy of all that too,” he said calmly.
She looked at the two staff members. “We are involved with this, sirs. We will deal with this one way or another.”
Laurie looked at Sasha, who adjusted his oculars. “Determination makes a good soldier. It can also be rather annoying.” He huffed his obvious frustration. “I can’t stop you, especially as the two of you have no obligation to even remain here. However, if that is your decision—”
“It is,” they replied in
unison.
“Trust me, they have this on lock,” Chief affirmed as he appeared beside Kaiden.
The commander smiled and placed a hand on Laurie’s shoulder. “We will take care of things on our end. But until we can get everything in order, what can we do to help?”
Kaiden looked at Chiyo but she simply waited for his move and looked at him with assurance. “We have a general idea of where some of them are—or their facilities, at least,” he said and fixed the two men with a firm look. “But I want to strike them somewhere that can’t be easily fixed or replaced. Their main HQ would be nice, but we didn’t find it in the files.”
“Even if that isn’t possible, something other than merely an automated facility like the one we found would work,” she added.
“They would have a place like that well-guarded,” Sasha pointed out. “Even all your friends together would have a hard time accomplishing something like that. And in this kind of situation, I would have to act as a board member and forbid—”
“I think that should be up to them,” the ace stated. “But I have other associates if we can actually find them and put my plan into action.”
“And what would that plan be, dear Kaiden?” Laurie asked.
He smiled and pounded his fist into his hand. “What I do best, obviously—a full-on assault.”
Infiltration: Origin Stories
Chapter One
Chiyo Kana
“Is that her?” a woman in the hallway asked another as she tried to return to her desk with her beverage. “Orikasa san’s daughter?”
“She’s his ward, Makoto,” her friend replied in another whisper, although they weren’t far enough from earshot as she turned the corner, leaned against the wall, and retrieved her phone. “Orikasa san doesn’t have any children by birth.”
“Still, I had never seen her until now. I honestly thought it was only a rumor,” Makoto replied. “I wonder what she is doing here. Do you think he brings her here to protect her? Maybe keep her out of public view?”
“I’m sure Sir Orikasa san has the funds to hire all kinds of caregivers and protection if he wanted to keep her at his house,” her friend replied. “Perhaps he’s training her to take over in the future.”
“Do you really think so?” The woman frowned. “I don’t believe she would be accepted but the scandal is still somewhat fresh. I’m shocked that she simply walks around. She should understand that she is the cause of—” Her phone suddenly blared and a song echoed loudly along the corridor, the lyrics speaking of the small miseries of life—such as idle chatter.
“Why do you have your ringer on at work?” her friend demanded and stepped away hastily.
“It shouldn’t be. I don’t know this song.” Makoto took her phone out frantically and peered at the screen. “No one is calling.”
The young girl put her own phone away and sighed as she continued her walk to the security division. If he asked why she did that, she would say practice. He would know better, but that was only if he caught her.
“Nice try, Chiyo.” Taro huffed as he took the canned coffee he’d asked her to get from her hand. “You know I have your devices scanned, right?”
She looked at the man with his shaved head and stern-looking eyes, yet they seemed rather relaxed at the moment and even bored. “You don’t seem that annoyed,” she stated and clambered onto a seat on the office chair opposite him in the tiny room.
“It’s not like you tried to hack into the private servers again,” he muttered and twisted the can open. “Randomly accessing another person’s phone and causing a ruckus seems a little childish. Normal for a ten-year-old, of course, but that doesn’t seem to be your style.” He took a sip of his beverage and leaned back. His chair angled slightly as he rubbed his temples. “Although I’m not sure if my job would be easier or harder if you were a normal ten-year-old.”
Chiyo shrugged and took small sips of her carbonated lychee drink. “I’ve seen other kids my age. My guess is that I would be bored.” She looked curiously at him. “How could you tell what I was doing? I learned how to find and block signal emission even before I met you.”
Taro rolled his eyes and placed his coffee on the table. “Do you really think I would have this job if I couldn’t deal with something as simple as that, little one?”
She looked away and didn’t reply.
The man shook his head. “I’ll give you credit that when I looked at your device, nothing showed that you blocked my tracking program or hid your connection to the lady’s phone. But I track everyone in this building. That woman’s phone—Makoto? The settings changed way too quickly if she only used the application screen to implement them.”
The girl frowned. “That sounds illegal.”
He nodded. “Probably extremely so too, but if you want to be an effective hacker, you have to be fine with a little murkiness and potential jail time.”
“What about white-hat hackers?” she asked.
He scoffed and reached for his can. “I said if you want to be an effective hacker, not a technically proficient janitor.”
Her cheeks ballooned out in a show of annoyance. “I’m not sure you should be telling me this.”
“Hey, the facts of life are tough on a kid,” he admitted with a self-assured smirk. “But you came to me, remember?”
“It was either that or you would tell my fa—Gendo I was looking into his files,” she reminded him.
“I saw potential and still do, although your speed as a delivery girl could be quicker.” He looked pointedly at the can. “This was almost at room temperature.”
“I’ll be sure to make it a priority next time,” she responded sarcastically.
“Getting snippy now, huh?” He grinned. “Good. You need a little grit to do this right.”
“You make quite a few assumptions,” she retaliated and gestured around the room. “I’m not sure if my future involves all…this. You only seem to do odd jobs. How can that be fulfilling?”
Taro rolled his eyes again, a frequent habit in their discussions. “Man, you’re so young and yet worried about job satisfaction. You need to loosen up, kid, and look to finding your own path.” He drained the last of the coffee, crushed the can in his hand, and tossed it into a small recycle bin close to the door. “I do what I want. Have you any idea how hard to secure that kind of freedom in a big corporation like this is? I take care of the stuff that can’t really be recorded for business reasons. Occasionally, I get big jobs. You’ve merely caught me in a slow period.”
“Wasn’t my case your last big job?” she inquired. “That seems to be rather silly—concerned over the crimes of a child.”
“Not really. I was the same way,” he admitted. “I was almost put in a juvenile prison for hacking into Mirai’s servers seventeen years ago. I only wanted schematics I could blow up into posters. The man who had my gig back then discovered me and brought me in as an apprentice instead.”
Chiyo tilted her head and regarded him with an expression that might have been understanding. “So this is full circle for you, then?”
“Maybe. It depends on whether or not you can get over your prepubescent life crisis.”
She puffed her cheeks out in exasperation again and he chuckled. “You really need to stop with the obvious tells. It’s not a good habit when you’ll have to deal with actual people to obtain info. Besides, it makes you look like a long-haired pufferfish. You gotta have chill in this line of work.” Taro looked up when the holoscreen behind her flashed. “It looks like something’s finished—actually, the project I had you working on is finished.”
The girl looked behind her and stretched her feet down to scoot the chair around to have a look. “It is. I’ve fixed all the problems in the simulation.”
Taro smiled as he turned. “Good job. And that wasn’t a simulation.”
“What do you mean?” She stared at him, confused,
There was a knock on the door and the man called for whoever it was to enter. An ol
der woman opened the door and a younger one with violet hair followed her in.
“Taro, Orikasa san wants to see— Why do you always have it so dark in here?”
“I get plenty of light from the monitor screen, Sayoko,” he replied and twirled to face the older woman, although his attention was focused on her younger companion. “Who’s the new one who actually had the decency to bring color to the place?”
“This is Rei. She’s my assistant,” his visitor stated. “As for the color of her hair, she has already been made aware of company policy and should dye it back to its natural color soon, correct?”
Rei nodded meekly. Taro stood and motioned for Chiyo to follow. “You should keep it colorful. Despite all the design work we do here, the personnel lack expression.”
“And you shouldn’t abuse your power here,” the woman muttered while she studied Chiyo. “Why are you taking her?”
“The boss wants to know how the progress on the system he asked me to verify is going, right?” he asked as the two of them left. “I should therefore bring the one who actually worked on it along.”
Chiyo’s eyes widened as the others walked down the hall. He looked back and beckoned for her to keep up. She took a deep breath and nodded before she rushed to his side.
Gendo stared silently at the two. Chiyo kept her head lowered but Taro had his hands in his pockets and leaned back lazily. He somehow seemed to look at the director and past him at the same time. “What do you think, boss? It’s impressive, right?”
He looked at the screen again. “I see no problems. In fact, I noticed a couple of issues that weren’t reported were also fixed.”
“She has a good eye for it,” her mentor stated and placed a hand on the young girl’s head. “I didn’t even have to teach her all that much. She’s at a level that something like this is basically normal schoolwork for her.”
The director scrutinized his daughter. “I confess, I’m a little perturbed that you didn’t consult with me before letting an unauthorized person—much less a child—look at one of our prototypes. However, I can’t dispute that the work was completed thoroughly, and in good time as well.” Chiyo looked up. His gaze was intense, but there was something else there beyond the normal unfathomable expression he normally displayed—something akin to interest and perhaps pride? No, she was altogether too hopeful.
Animus Boxed Set 2 (Books 5-8): Revenant, Glitch, Master, Infiltration Page 83
