”Do you know where we’re going from here, Shiro?” Luna asked me. The minimap at the top of my HUD flickered and changed to the building’s schematic. I’d already scraped the original prints from the city archives.

“I think so.” I paused for a moment and thought through my original plan. Coming through the emergency hatch wasn’t all that bad, to be honest. My original route would’ve seen me come through the much heavier guarded roof access, and then forced me to work through several layers to get to the central server room.

The central server room would probably have what we needed. If not, I might need to find a manager or the CEO’s office and access their terminals. Honestly, it might be smarter to just go ahead and access one of their computers instead of the heavily guarded server room. It’d be easier to hide an intrusive look if it came directly from the servers, though.

I checked my gear and made sure I still had everything. I adjusted my earbud from where it got loose in the drop. They were designed to stay in my ear and hide against my skin, though, so it didn’t fall out. The noise canceling effect of the earbuds momentarily rendered me deaf before it fixed itself.

The buds were simple pieces of tech, really. They were mostly to block out noise over a certain decibel level—mainly gunshots and explosions. Outside of that, they’d been almost entirely useless since I made them. Their other main feature was to communicate like a comm piece, but the Packheart Rings made that obsolete. Still, I’d rather not have my eardrums blown out.

Vox jumped back up onto my shoulder once I had my backpack situated and made herself comfy. She brushed up against my cheek affectionately, and her ears twitched out toward the door. My minimap lit up with two red pings slowly moving down the hall.

”You integrated her sensors into tracking software?” I asked softly and watched the two pings. I glanced away, and small red dots appeared on my HUD through the wall. They updated every couple seconds.

”Yeah.” My HUD flashed with a soft blue light, and the red dots updated into full 3D models as Luna used some kind of network ping on them. Their guns and chrome were highlighted in a deeper red. A third distorted figure appeared for a moment before vanishing. “The range is super limited though. I ran out of space to take a deep dive into some of your tech.”

”Chek. I’ll make you another subroutine core.” They weren’t super difficult, but were super complicated. It was basically an entire server room shoved into a small sphere. Robots needed so much code just to work, so subroutine cores were a requirement unless I went for the wireless approach. That had its own issues, though.

”You feel a little left out too, Saint?” Mira groaned. I watched her do lazily loops on my minimap.

”I mean, not really?” Saint didn’t seem nearly as torn up as my mikata.

”Really? Ugh—maybe I should read some more boring textbooks to understand you nerds. My own conversation partner isn’t any fun.” Mira sighed softly. “What happened to you being a grifter?”

”I never claimed that.” Saint coughed lightly. “I’m just a simple reporter.”

”Right… because an ex-super star is simple.” Mira’s voice dripped with sarcasm. “You still play, actually? Mind giving me a few tips?”

”No problem—“

”Can we clear the chatter?” I asked and activated my Perks. Illusive washed over me, drawing shadows up to obscure my form. A small sphere poked up from my bag to cover the more technical observers. “Or just call each other?”

”Sorry, sorry,” the blonde muttered. She sounded like a puppy that’d just been kicked and scolded.

I shook my head and slid open the door. My head twisted down the hall, and then back the other way. Empty—at least, mostly. A clean drone sat docked in a small cubby just down the hall. It was off, but its glowing red sensor twisted and turned down the hall like constant surveillance.

A slogan about keeping the world clean sat just above it. The paint was faded, though, like it’d been put up there decades ago and no one bothered to care about touching it up since.

The coast was clear for the moment. I exited out into the hall and moved down to an intersection just as two guards rounded the corner in front of me. I knew they were coming thanks to Luna’s ping though, and slid against the side of the wall. Vox’s tail tightened subtly around my shoulder, and the cold metal pressed into my poncho.

There were two of them—one bald and the other scruffy. Both had on plate carriers and carried simple security gear. Pistols, mainly. No ARs for once. This was a reputable corporation, though, so that probably wasn’t all that surprising. Bet these slags even had firearm permits.

They paused at the intersection and looked around for one second. Five—ten. They both looked directly at me, but their chrome eyes glazed right over my hidden form. Just as I was getting uncomfortable, they moved down the hall in the direction I needed to go.

I hesitated for a moment and then followed a short distance behind them. I probably wouldn’t have to run into another patrol if I trailed them like this. ‘Sides, it was darkest under the lamp, chek?

After a while, the silence broke and the bald guard sighed heavily. “Hey, did you get that firmware update last night?”

”Yeah, third time this week…” The other guy seemed equally irritated by it. He spoke casually without any hint of wariness or rush in his voice. It sounded like he wasn’t even on guard duty. “Think there’s something going on?”

“Always, chum.” The bald guy ran a hand up to his eyes. “Hate being blind like that. It’ll fuck me over one of these days—“

“Yip!” Vox barked from my shoulder, and her eyes widened—only to freeze midmotion. Her head dropped, and her eyes shrank like someone had hit rewind, only to repeat the motions all over again. “Yip!”

My hands snapped up to the fox. I quickly pulled her off my shoulder and hugged Vox to my chest. A current of electricity slipped directly into the small metal fox. It flicked an emergency shutdown switch I’d installed into her, and the entire robot shut off.

”Hey, did you hear something?” One of the guards paused and turned back to face me. His chrome eyes glazed right over me, and by extension Vox. My blinder encompassed both of us given our proximity.

My breath slowed to the point I was barely even drawing in air. The respirator part of my mask was almost entirely silent, but with two people carefully listening I didn’t dare to breathe too loudly. No telling if one of them had an audio suite on top of their other cybernetics.

The other guard eyed the hallway with his pistol drawn. They both stood still and watched my side of the hall like hawks. Eventually, the second guard straightened up. “Sounded like a bark… think its a Magus?”

“Maybe… could’ve been ventilation, though. The vents have been a bit squeaky recently.” As if to prove that sentiment, my HUD flashed with light blue and a vent somewhere further into the building creaked lightly.

”Yeah… yeah maybe.” The other guard didn’t seem convinced, though. “It sounded a bit different. Let’s check it out just in case. Call it in.”

The first guard looked a little unwilling, though lifted his hand to the side of his shaved head. His eyes pulsed with light. “Overwatch, this is patrol DS-thirty-two. We’re investigating a weird noise. Potentially an intruder.”

The return call crackled into my earbuds courtesy of Luna. That girl—she really was brave, wasn’t she? Hacking directly into their comms like this and patching me in was practically flaunting herself in front of the enemy Netrunners. “Roger. Alert level?”

”Low. Could’ve been the vents.” The guard motioned to his buddy. “We’ll call back in a couple.”

”Stay safe.” Overwatch’s voice dripped with wariness. “Sensors have been a little glitchy tonight. I’ll route another patrol to close in behind you.”

”Thanks.” The guy lowered his hand, and his eyes stopped glowing. He drew his pistol and waved forward. “Ladies first.”

”That’s fine.” The guard huffed a laugh. “It’s always the rear guy that dies first in horror movies. Good luck, chum.”

Contrary to their conversation, they moved together back toward me. I stood up and slipped back a few steps while carefully and noiselessly settling the offline body of Vox around my shoulders.

The shadows swayed around me, and I pressed myself up against the wall. The two guards slowly moved down toward me shoulder to shoulder. One brushed within reaching distance of me, and I held my breath. The soft rasp of my respirator went entirely silent until they passed by and I finally dared to breathe once more.

Once they were out of reach, I slipped into a janitor’s closest and sent a pulse of Technical Expertise through my robot. Nothing broke on the mechanical side. “What the hell was that, Luna?”

”U-um… I-I’m not sure. She might’ve gotten stuck in a cognitive loop.” Luna blew up a bunch of code that didn’t make sense to me onto my HUD. A bolt of irritation flowed through me, though I forced it down and used Badger’s Code Scan. About three hundred errors popped up in glowing red.

I flowed through the list and marked them down for Luna. “Can we fix it? Or am I better off running this solo like usual, and we can iron out the kink later?”

”It should be fixed.” She sent me an updated code. “T-try turning her back on.”

I hesitated for a moment and then followed the Netrunner’s command. Vox trembled as the robot came back to life, and her silver eyes glowed with a small loading symbol. They narrowed, and intelligence flowed back into her. “Yip?”

”Can we shut off her bark? Just for tonight.” I tried to ignore her betrayed look—or maybe that was just my own guilt flowing through? It was a bit hard to look at her as just a robot when her reactions were so vivid.

Vox tensed up, and her eyes glowed blue as Luna took over. “Done.”

”Maybe you guys should’ve tested the bot before taking it out for a walk,” Saint spoke quietly.

“No kidding.” Mira groaned. “At least an issue already happened, so the rest of the job should be smooth sailing.”

”Hey! Don’t make it sound so formulaic!” Not like I did this kind of thing intentionally. And! And I’d had several jobs go off without even a hitch… though not lately. Maybe stress was finally starting to get to me.

We’d tested Vox too. There was bound to be some things that slipped through what we could manage, but at least it was a relatively minor one this time around. When we got back, I’d have Luna run Vox through a ton more tests just to make sure we had everything.

I bickered with Mira for a bit longer, and then slipped back out into the hall. Pings lit up my HUD occasionally, and I routed through a side hall toward the center of the building. Cameras sat above me, with small red blips the only indication that they were active.

”Wait—“ Luna called out a fraction too late, and I turned a corner. The moment I turned, my HUD lit up with dozens of red indicators.

A bright flash caught me off guard, and my eyes momentarily went blind from where they’d adjusted to the dim darkness. I slunk lower into the shadows and tried to make sense of what was going on in front of me.

The hall was roped off with bright yellow crime scene tape. It pulsed with ribbons of emergency light, and small holographic warning messages fluttered just over the yellow tape. Looked Crusade issued. I’d seen the stuff around while working for them.

Several security guards idled around while a squire in a trenchcoat moved around the hall with a camera strapped to her neck. She took a picture of an open office room with blood spilling out through the door, then backed away and glanced back toward me. Her eyes widened for a moment—

A tide of terror erupted from me and targeted her. The Aether seemed to tremble for a moment as my Perk, Silent Terror activated for the first time since I got it. The moment she flinched, I ducked back out of the hall and away from her sight.

”What the fuck was that?” I heard her ask, but I was already working my way toward a detour route. I watched her through a a Dragonfly that took up a position on the roof.

”What was what?” One of the security guards asked and looked toward the area I just vacated. Naturally, he didn’t see anything.

“I don’t know.” Although she said that, her eyebrows were still knit in confusion. “Looked like a panther.”

”The closest zoo’s a bit far from here,” the guard called sarcastically. He snapped his fingers at two of the others. “Go check it out.”

”Might’ve been nothing… haven’t been sleeping well.” The squire sighed and went back to taking pictures of the crime scene.

I walked a bit further before finally finding my server room. “That was a bit close.”

”S-sorry. They were on a different network.”

”It’s fine. All’s well that ends well.” I eyed the door to the server room. It was covered in all sorts of locks and sensors. “Now help me pop this open.”

”Right.” The netrunner got back to work while I watched the halls and slipped into the shadows.