RETALI8ION: The Cobalt Code

by Meador, Amber Neko

  “Well... at least I see why you hesitated. What's my take for helping?”

  “You can have it all. Plus whatever else we can take from this bastard. I just wanna see the look on his face when he realizes he fucked with the wrong woman,” Regina replied with a harsh tone.

  “That bad, huh?”

  Regina looked over at Thomas, who was patiently waiting on her to finish her conversation. “More than you know.”

  “Can you go ahead and send me what you got?” Artemis questioned.

  “Yeah, just send me the location you want me to drop the files in. It might take a little bit though. It's a few terabytes worth.”

  “Here you go,” Artemis said.

  A link popped up on Regina's tablet. She tapped on the tablet for a few moments. “Okay, it's on its way to you.”

  “I see the files coming in. Looks like a good connection, so it will probably take about a half hour or so,” Artemis said as he looked off screen. “Say, do you still use a local storage device on Thomas's camera?”

  “Sure do. For just such occasions, actually. Though I've never had to use it,” Regina said looking down to the camera on Thomas's harness.

  “Amzle! Alright, send a copy once you get it pulled, and you start taking a look at that on your way down here,” Artemis said, returning his gaze to the screen and conversation with Regina.

  “Down where?” asked Regina.

  “We can't be talking like this much longer. Locater services will be able to find you,” Artemis stated matter-of-factly.

  “Probably not. Well, not unless they've got considerably more skills than I do,” Regina replied with a cocky smile.

  Artemis looked confused. “This came in as a standard connection, didn't it?”

  Regina moved her data tablet to show Artemis the exposed control panel, and then tilted the tablet backwards to show the tower above her.

  “Nice. I'm going to have to remember that,” Artemis said with a smile. “Security cameras?”

  “On a loop,” Regina replied confidently.

  “That's the girl I remember. So, let's meet up where cyborgs dare not sleep in about two hours. Suits?”

  “Suits,” replied Regina. “And thanks, EarAddaK8.”

  Artemis nodded, then ended the call.

  “Looks like I get to make good on that promise of food, old buddy. So let's roll,” Regina said as she stood up.

  Thomas wiggled his way out of the bag. “I walk.”

  Regina studied him for a moment. “Are you sure? Are you hurting?”

  “Yes. Less now,” Thomas replied.

  “Alright then, in that case we'll take the elevator. I know they have a video feed, but by the time they figure out who we are, we'll be gone.”

  “Is food where cyborgs not sleep,” asked Thomas with a tilt of his head.

  “Yep. We're heading to Kusanagi's Kafe.”

  -3-

  Kusanagi's was a small net cafe located on the eleventh floor of the Thuman bank building. A building famous for its private security services that had no connection to the outside world. To say unscrupulous deals were made within its walls would most likely be a huge understatement. But, as long as the occupants followed the rules, their goings and comings were never reported to anyone other than building management. The only sign outside to indicate Regina had found the right place was a small meter-wide sign with a bar code printed across it.

  “Food here?” asked Thomas.

  “Yes. You can have whatever you want,” Regina said as she looked down at her tablet to see what time it was. It had been just over two hours since she'd spoken with Artemis, and she guessed he was probably already inside. “Let's go.”

  Regina walked up to the plain polished steel door and pushed it open. The lobby was just as nondescript as the doors, with plain white walls, one other doorway on the back wall, and a small black desk sitting in the middle. A single woman, wearing a very expensive black cheongsam, was sitting behind the desk.

  “Greetings, and welcome to Kusanagi's. I am Yoko. How may I assist you today?” the woman asked.

  Regina noticed, as she got closer that this was either an android or a cyborg. Hard to tell. But the body was undoubtedly a high quality model, as she could just barely make out the joint connections near its neck.

  “Hi. I need to go to the Red Room please,” Regina stated as she came to a stop in front of the desk.

  “Reason for visit?” asked the cybernetic secretary.

  “I'm here to get my friend here some noodles. He really likes them,” Regina replied motioning towards Thomas.

  “I don't,” Thomas stated, confused.

  Regina's expression changed to one of displeasure.

  Thomas lowered his head and said, “I like.”

  Regina looked back up, and smiled, awaiting a response.

  “Very well. Please follow Tyko to your destination,” Yoko replied, pointing to a small black orb-shaped robot on the desk next to several others just like it.

  The small bot jumped to life, with arms and legs springing from within it. “Please follow me,” it stated cheerfully as it started giving off a diluted red glow.

  “Thank you, Yoko,” Regina said as she started to follow the little robot.

  “This way,” the little bot shouted, jumping off the desk, as the doors behind the desk opened automatically.

  The doors opened into a long white hallway. The only feature seemed to be several elevator entrances along the right side. Tyko walked up to the middle elevator, and was followed closely by Regina and Thomas.

  “Just a few seconds, please,” Tyko said hastily as it tapped its foot on the ground.

  The elevator sounded its arrival, and the doors opened.

  “Please step in,” Tyko said as he ran into the elevator.

  Regina and Thomas entered the elevator and the doors soon closed behind them. The small robot jumped up and pressed a button on the elevators panel. The doors closed, and the elevator started moving downward.

  “Ten seconds,” Tyko announced happily.

  Regina counted the seconds in her head as she watched the fidgety little robot scuttle around on the elevator floor. Sure enough, ten seconds later, the elevator doors opened again.

  “This way,” the little bot said as it left the elevator, and took off down the hallway.

  Regina maintained her slower pace, trying to take in her surroundings as they went. This particular hallway still had a white ceiling and walls, but the carpet was a deep luscious red.

  “Here we are, M'lady. The Red Room!” Tyko said stopping in front of a mahogany-colored wood door about nine meters from the elevator.

  “Thanks, Tyko,” Regina said as she stepped in front of the door.

  “My pleasure,” Tyko said with a strange salute. “Please come again,” it said as it took off back down the hallway.

  “Let's see if anything has changed, shall we?” Regina said, looking down at Thomas.

  “Yes,” Thomas replied.

  Regina pushed open the wooden door, and walked in. The room was dressed in every color of red one could imagine. From the deepest and darkest to the tones as close to pink as one could go without crossing the line. The colors also seemed to lighten as one looked up. The carpet was a deep first blood kind of red wine, the tables looked to be either a ruby or classic polished cherry, chairs seemed to be different variations of cherry or apple, and the ceiling and its drapery seemed to be rose colored.

  “Pretty,” stated Thomas.

  “Yeah, it kind of is. But try to stay on your toes. We have some business to mix with our pleasure tonight,” Regina said, as she started walking through the room looking for Artemis, who should have already arrived.

  Although the room seemed to have plenty of seating, she only saw a few patrons inside, none of which paid her any attention. The only one who seemed somewhat out of place was one young man who seemed to be coding something as though his life depended on it. And maybe it did.

  Cross
ing behind one dividing wall, Regina spotted Artemis. He wasn't hard to spot; he always wore this strange yellow knitted hat when he went out. Regina thought it made him stand out too much, but at the same time she wandered around in a dark blue trench coat, and always had a three-foot-tall cat by her side. Artemis was sitting alone in this divided off section at a booth near the end of the lane. Only one other person was sitting in the section, they were wearing a hood so she couldn't see their face, but they looked to be paying her no attention, buried in whatever was on their laptop's screen.

  Artemis noticed her approaching, and waved her over. “Well, if it isn't the little white American girl who couldn't find her way into oPhone app when I first met her. Let's see...” he said, as he started looking her over. “Trench coat, impractical black knee-high boots, and an off-brand AR headset that doesn't look like you've taken it off in days. You haven't changed a bit,” he said with a smile as Regina approached. “Hair's new. Is that how the kids are wearing it these days?”

  “I assure you my boots are very practical, and I don't need fashion advice from someone who wears a butchered Pikawho for a hat,” Regina replied as she sat down in the booth, opposite Artemis.

  “You look like shit,” Artemis said, leaning forward towards her.

  “Thanks. I look better than I feel, I assure you,” Regina replied.

  Thomas hopped up into the booth beside Regina. “Food?”

  “Hey there, Tomcat. How are you doing?” Artemis asked as Thomas settled in.

  “Hello, Art. Hurt. Hungry,” Thomas replied.

  Regina reached over and turned on the ordering system's screen that was in the middle of the table, and tilted it towards Thomas. “Order whatever you want.”

  “Yep,” Thomas stated enthusiastically as he pawed at the screen to scroll through the menu.

  “Hey, I wanna go ahead and get something out of the way so you can be mad at me now instead of later,” Artemis said, turning his attention back to Regina.

  Regina turned her head slightly and glanced around.

  “No no, nothing like that. I just brought in some old friends once I saw what we were looking at. And before you go getting all mad, don't. I don't want any money. I doubt there is going to be any. This is solely for you at this point,” Artemis said quickly, trying to explain himself.

  “What do you mean?” Regina asked cautiously.

  “Look, this probably goes deeper than either of us realize at this point. So I called the old Tribul8 crew in to help out on this one,” Artemis said, leaning back and resting his arms casually on the back of the booth's seat.

  “Artemis, you can't bring them into this. Twenty Enforcers broke into two hotels rooms tonight, and did a whole fucking lot of shooting first, and asking zero fucking questions later,” Regina said alarmingly.

  Artemis leaned forward again. “Lower your voice a bit. Look, I know this may come as a shock to you. But let me assure you that we could not have done this by ourselves, at least not in the time frame you are gonna need it done in. And don't worry, every member of the crew, who is still alive, owes their life to you and your quick thinking. So don't even think about running out on them now. They are already here.”

  Regina was furious. But tried her best to calm her breathing. “Alright, start talking.”

  “That a girl. Time is, unfortunately, of the essence,” Artemis said with a smile. He then reached up and made a motion with his hands towards someone.

  Regina turned to see that the hooded figure was standing up. She watched as the person started walking towards them, and slowly pulled their hood back, revealing the most shiny neon pink hair Regina had ever seen. That pink hair framed a near perfectly symmetrical androgynous face below. A face Regina recognized. “Yosha, you crazy son of a bitch,” she said with a smile.

  “Pronouns, please,” Yosha said.

  “Sorry, my fault. You crazy child of a bitch,” Regina said, correcting herself.

  Artemis slid over, and Yosha took a seat next to him.

  “How are you holding up?” Yosha asked, sitting their laptop on the table.

  “I've been better,” Regina replied with a shrug.

  “I bet. How are you doing, Thomas?” Yosha asked, looking over at the cat.

  “Been better,” replied Thomas.

  “Well let's get to it, huh?” Yosha said, pressing a button on the laptop.

  Regina watched as several components were displayed on the screen. The only thing she recognized was the name at the top of the screen. CEL P7. “What am I looking at?”

  “This is apparently what you were sent in to find, from what I understand.”

  Regina nodded.

  “Well this is CEL P7, a brand new interaction enhancement drug made by our friends at MPHarm. This thing hasn't even been announced to stockholders yet. Otherwise their stock would have seen a swift uptick,” Yosha said, somewhat excitedly.

  “So what does it do?” Regina asked.

  “You've used Regenerzon K before when diving. Like during the China job we did two years ago when we had to pull that little princess out of that slave trade org. It's like speed for computer junkies, right? Well, this little pill does that, but better. Plus, it even increases the physical interaction you'd get from a dive suit by slowing down some of your physical responses, and speeding up others, like your hands and arms,” Yosha finished with a hand motion to make it seem as though their brain was exploding. “It's quite exciting. Ya know, if it works like they hope it does.”

  “Will it?” Regina asked, suddenly very curious. “I mean, without melting my brain and all that kind of stuff.”

  “Maybe... Probably. I don't know. But they sure think it will. They just sent a testing request for it today. Or yesterday, now that it's after midnight,” Yosha said pushing a button to display the documents that had been submitted by MPHarm.

  “Fuck,” was the only word Regina could say at that moment.

  “Food.” Thomas stated, as a waitress started coming towards the table.

  “Who ordered the Kansas City Strip?” the waitress asked as she approached the table.

  “Mine,” Thomas said happily.

  The waitress looked Thomas over, shrugged, and sat the plate down in front of Thomas. “Enjoy.”

  “Will,” Thomas said.

  “Steak? Are you sure you're a cat?” Artemis asked.

  Thomas looked towards Artemis and produced a goofy toothy grin. “Meow.”

  Thomas then started eating the steak without any table grace or manners to speak of.

  Regina turned her attention from Thomas's socially inappropriate eating habits, and back to Yosha. “Then it makes sense that that was what I was sent to get. Especially if it actually does all of that without turning up veggies.”

  “Yeah, but then there's the frack of it all,” Artemis said as Yosha closed the laptop. “It wasn't another pharmaceutical company, or even a conglomerate with pharm co ties that hired you for that run.”

  “I'll have to admit, I'm pretty damn interested in who did, then,” Regina replied.

  “How close did you inspect that video from Thomas's rig cam?” Artemis asked.

  “Pretty fucking closely. Aside from the one suit who was dropping the stick to Thomas, there wasn't anyone else in the alley. There were two vehicles on adjacent streets. One blue sedan, and one white van. And aside from Mr. $600 Tie taking way too long to deliver a data stick, there didn't seem to be anything else to take away from it. He was obviously communicating with someone on his headset, but I haven't worked out how since it seemed to be a dead zone for broadcast,” Regina said.

  “That's what I thought, too. But it's not what Amina thought,” Artemis said, sliding a folded piece of paper across the table towards Regina.

  Regina picked the paper up and opened it. It was a frequency. She pulled her data tablet out and connected a cord from it to a port on Thomas's headset, and tapped out a few commands. She then disconnected it from Thomas's headset and connected it to he
r own. She quickly repeated the program actions on her tablet, and disconnected the cord.

  “I'm here,” Regina said softly, waiting for a response.

  “Natali8! How have you been, girly?” asked a voice on her headset.

  “Not bad, how about you, Ur2L8?” Regina replied in kind.

  “Way better than you, but we can catch up later. Right now I've got some info to cram into your ear holes,” Amina replied.

  “Go ahead,” Regina said.

  “That suit was talking to someone. I got in touch with a few friends in the area to see if they knew anything about a communications disturbance in the area. Followed a few leads, decrypted a few channels worth of info, and then I hit the jackpot. And you'd never be able to guess who it was.”

  “Surprise me,” Regina replied.

  “Koeul Hak-kun,” Amina said proudly.

  “You were right. I'd never be able to guess that,” Regina stated dully. “Don't get me wrong. I understand that it probably took a fancy bit of work to figure out who it was. But who the hell is Koeul Hak-kun?”

  “Does the name Koto Daniels ring any bells? Hak-kun is his personal assistant,” Amina replied.

  “The PM? The fracking prime minister of this region? You're blowing me? You have to be.” retorted Regina.

  “Well no, I'm not. Not for lack of trying though, if you remember. But yes, the teme himself. Mr. Koto Daniels.”

  “Holy shit,” Regina replied, dropping her tablet to the table. “Oh, fuck me. How the hell did this happen? What the hell does the prime minister need with something like that?”

  “That, my dear, is the fifteen million dollar question now, isn't it?” Artemis asked.

  “Please don't. There is probably an Enforcer squad storming this building as we speak. You could at least tell me why I'm going to be gunned down here in the Red Room. It's so the blood won't show, isn't it?”

  “No sign of Enforcers yet, kiddo,” came another voice from Regina's headset.

  “Grendal! How's my favorite fracking gunhead doing today?” Regina asked as though she'd just talked with him yesterday. At this point, nothing was going to surprise her.

  “Not bad. Not bad. I was actually hoping to run into a few of your Enforcer friends tonight. They tend to be harder to kill than most, and I figure they'll show up sooner or later,” Grendal said happily.