Glitch in the God Complex (AmpCore #1)

52 - The Dirty Work

extract_8653_messagelog-hardcache202988

networkIdent:[ACCESS DENIED]

SenderID || [ACCESS DENIED] – Someone's looking for us.

SenderID || [ACCESS DENIED] – You're going to have to elaborate.

SenderID || [ACCESS DENIED] – The factory where you're making your fucking toys. Someone's been trying to find the location, and I think they might have done it.

SenderID || [ACCESS DENIED] – How the hell did that happen?!

SenderID || [ACCESS DENIED] – I have no idea, but my tracking daemons just flagged a search log for the Battery Plant off the 135.

SenderID || [ACCESS DENIED] – Who is it? Is it her?

SenderID || [ACCESS DENIED] – Russell? No, she's still locked up in AmpCore. The signal trace was scrambled all to hell but we've narrowed it to an apartment complex a few blocks outside the Heart.

SenderID || [ACCESS DENIED] – Do we think it's another corporation?

SenderID || [ACCESS DENIED] – I don't see who else could. They may not know anything for sure yet. Maybe they're just guessing.

SenderID || [ACCESS DENIED] – A hell of a guess.

SenderID || [ACCESS DENIED] – Well, your 'assets' haven't exactly been subtle, have they? Did your shitty technicians figure out how Russell hijacked one of those units yet?

SenderID || [ACCESS DENIED] – Preliminary datasets indicate she somehow managed some kind of brute force override of the higher logic functions.

SenderID || [ACCESS DENIED] – Like when you lost control of them before?

SenderID || [ACCESS DENIED] – No, this is different. Last time they just went dark. With Russell, we saw what happened in real time.

SenderID || [ACCESS DENIED] – So... what does that mean?

SenderID || [ACCESS DENIED] – It means she's even more trouble than we thought, and it would have been better if the damned wraiths had killed her the night we found her. We're too close now. We're still analysing the data from the asset strike team, but that's my problem. Get a unit out to that fucking apartment complex. I want surveillance around the clock. Maybe we'll get lucky and someone will stick their head up over the parapet so we can blow it off.

extract_terminated

*

Arrow couldn't sleep.

Memories of the party flickered in their mind. They tried to get the image of Piper and Odiye out of their head, the two of them tangled together in a blissful blaze. It was jealousy of a kind, but they couldn't decide the exact form.

On some level they quite simply liked Piper, and there was a frustrating sense of helplessness there. The connection of the implants was something unpredictable and very difficult to overcome, and it didn't seem like they would ever discover if they had that kind of compatibility.

Something deeper dug at them though: the sheer intimacy that the pair of them seemed to share – were probably changing right now. Toran's jibe about one night stands stung like a lingering hook in her mind. Finding someone to fool around with to take the edge off wasn't difficult. Finding someone who actually they actually gave a shit about, and felt the same, was a different task altogether.