Glitch in the God Complex (AmpCore #1)

31 - Bloodhound Diplomacy

She had to admit, these two kids didn't screw around.

The main table in her converted kiosk was a sprawl of actual paper blueprints, data pads and a glimmering computer screen at which Arden Russell sat, her face tight with concentration. A splurge of black-market tech specs Selbray had provided gleamed on one of the pads, outlining the kind of material you might need to try and built a codewraith of your very own.

Delgado couldn't exactly say she was surprised by the revelations. The corporations made rules for other people to follow, not themselves, but it still wasn't a very pleasant thought knowing that the things prowling and murdering in Hadrian were home-grown.

Sipping at a beer, she stood up casting an expectant look at the duo.

"Looks like you had a day of it," she said.

"You'd be surprised how helpful people are when you mention wraiths on the loose," Arden replied grimly.

Standing at a right angle to her, leaning over a thicket of blueprints and diagrams, Kirk squinted, cocking his head to one side.

"Did you get what we needed?" Delgado asked, looking pointedly at him. It had cost her more than one irreplaceable favour to scrape up the crypts Selbray had asked for in order to divulge his knowledge of codewraith construction.

Kirk's eyes flickered to her. "He gave us what he had."

"And what was that?"

"Selbray pulled an old factory print, from Hadrian South, from back before..." he explained, tapping one of the thick sheets of paper with one finger. "Hence the old school display."

"Yeah, anybody outside of a corp keeping that on their system would be buying a one way ticket to a cell and a fat lawsuit," Arden muttered, fingers clattering awkwardly along the unfamiliar physical keys of Delgado's computer.

"Alright, so that's a factory for building wraiths?" Delgado heaved herself up out of her chair and shuffled across the room, sipping at her beer as she moved around to lean in over Kirk's shoulder. A blizzard of faded white diagrams and lines of text greeted her spread across several sheets curled and stained sheets of thick blue paper.

"Apparently." Kirk smirked. "So this is a Skiltron-AtomTech fabrication yard. That's where they built most of the..." He shrugged. "Well, I guess they didn't call them codewraiths then."

"Self-Actioning Mechs," Delgado murmured, peering closer. "That was the clean term for it." She placed her beer to one side. "You say AtomTech?"

"Mhm. Know them?"

"I've heard the name."

"Well, nobody's doing deals with them anymore." He gave a black chuckle. "Their HQ got torched along with everything else in Hadrian South after the schism."

Arden let out a derisive snort. "Still got Skiltron though, don't we?"

"The other corps cannibalised AtomTech before they pulled the plug. You can bet every last crypt that they still have the know-how to build these things. The only thing stopping them is the politics."

"Yeah." Delgado cupped her chin in one hand. "People in Hadrian put up with a lot of shit, but if word got out about this..."

"Might finally get the spine to have an honest-to-god riot."

"Well we've got to prove it first."

She wasn't an engineer by any stretch, but she could read as well as the next person. The old fabricator yards were massive structures, and as she looked over the dimensions for the foundations, she could see that this was no exception. The factory would have sprawled over a whole city block.