Chapter 19

"Hmm. you're a pleasure to work with. I put in all the chips, I don't even have to try to break in now. All the active accounts are already in my possession. And there's an obscene amount of money in here."

I shrugged at Lucy's comment; I didn't care much at the moment. I needed to get to the lower level. And that meant going down the stairs...

"Back..."

I hadn't yet touched the door to the stairs when Lucy interrupted me.

"...found an old file, the stairs were ordered to be booby-trapped. No one ever goes up there. The only way in is through the elevator.

I frowned.

"Bad..."

Covering my eyes I thought for a couple seconds.

"...is the door booby-trapped?

"Checking..."

Judy's voice made it clear that she would be taking me next, Lucy handed her all the data and once again immersed herself in the data and attempts to steal money from the underground fight club.

"...the door is clear..."

"All right. (chuckles)"

I nodded and carefully opened the door, activating my kiroshi in several modes at once. And making sure I could see the mines, I sighed and took a step onto the landing. So, uh. let's see what I can do.

I activated the sandi and take the first step, a short push and my foot already touches the wall, good thing these mines are below me, fixed on the wall and use a laser beam, the interruption of which should cause an explosion, so being on the wall above the mine I pushed off again. The stairwell is short, so I pushed off from the wall where the stairs were, and then pushed off again...

Three minutes by my personal time I finally made it to the lower level, but there a few mines is exactly in front of the door so adjusting the push and snatching up the harpoon gun drove its harpoon into the bottom of the floor platform that was above.

"Judy, can you make me a mine-disabling demon?

"Just a second..."

"Fuck, man, how did you do that?"

Becky's voice was delighted and amazed that I had made it to the bottom floor.

"Sandy and strong legs. But I wouldn't go up like that... and it would be hard to do it again. I'll have to talk to Victor about installing synthetic muscles."

"With Vic?"

Becca winced at my words.

"This guy's gonna talk you out of it."

"Why would I do that?"

I was really surprised by Becky's words. No, he's certainly the cautious type, and at first was against installing my new chrome, but that's only because he's concerned about his clients and requires a full rehab.

"Well, Mayne tried to collaborate with him, but according to him he kept talking him out of the new chrome..."

"But you're working with him."

"Well, uh. yeah."

Becky's voice was slightly surprised, apparently she'd never thought of such a twist in life.

"It's all about the approach..."

"А?"

"Vic is a serious man and does not like haste. When I first came to him, he corrected my sandi and the only thing he was not against was replacing optics, and that was only because everyone has them now and replacing one chrome with another does not affect the load of the body."

"Done..."

Judy's voice interrupted Becca's conversation, and I opened her e-mail and downloaded the demon, then quickly disconnected all the mines on the site. I put my hand on the slab to which the harpoon was attached and pushed back, commanding him to unhook the cable from the harpoon itself.

"There is a security post outside the door, but they are very relaxed."

"Can you distract them?"

"I can disable the Coke machine and the TV."

"Do it."

Literally ten seconds and it's done. Judy informs me, so I open the door and, activating the sandi, quickly pass the empty guard station. And then quickly disappeared into one of the rooms, which turned out to be the fighters' locker room. At least that's what I infer from the sheer number of lockers.

"Where to go next, where's the goal?"

"You're down the hall. There'll be a fork, turn right, then the guard room..."

"Got it while I get to another security room. I'm on my way."

I left the room and walked down the corridor to the fork, where I turned in the direction Judy had indicated. The door I came to was massive, and it was the kind of door that would make you think about getting gorilla arms. And the only thing that stopped me was that I realized that those arms didn't fit my style of work.

"Connecting to the door..."

I plugged the cable into the door and immediately felt the deck heat up, through which one of the runners started working. I had no idea who it was, and it didn't matter.

"There are no cameras, we only know that our target is there from conversations, so be careful."

Judy had warned me that they didn't know what was inside, so when the door started to open with a quiet hiss I activated the sandi.

It was probably the only thing that saved my life. The shot came from behind the door just as I slipped inside, and if I'd been wearing my usual, accessible sandi, I wouldn't have had time to react. Because the shot was fired by a man who was moving...

He was fucking moving, albeit slower than me.

Which means he has a sandi too, just not like me.

Partially out of the attack, I only grimaced at the sensation of the shot ripping through my left arm, although, to be honest, at that moment I wanted to fall to the floor and scream in pain. The only thing stopping me was that I was used to working solo and realized that if I fell out of acceleration, I was dead.

I won't be spared.

This guy has no reason to let me live. Only to keep me temporarily on the brink of life and death, in order to extract from me the names of my accomplices, as well as the name of the customer.

Obviously, I'm not happy with that.

My right hand snatches the gun from its holster, and I fire three shots at him. One shot hits the muzzle, tearing it apart. Shrapnel flew in all directions, so it was not only the owner of the shotgun, but me as well.

My opponent froze, he clearly fell out of acceleration and I fired four more shots at his knee and elbow joints. Even if he has a good chrome standing, my gun is powerful enough to penetrate such obvious vulnerable points.

Turning off the sandi I saw my opponent fall to the floor.

"Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah.

Staggering back to the door I barely stood on my own feet and back to the door I shut it tightly.

"Can you hear me?"

"Are you okay?"

Judy's voice was slightly agitated.

"Yeah... Sandy was the target. and, uh."

I looked around his office.

"...redundant surveillance system. Must've picked me up when I was walking on the first floor."

"I'll kill you! I'll kill you! You think you're gonna get away with this?!"

I cringed a little at the idiot's shouting, and looked around at him and bent down to take his belt off his waist. He was a little confused, but I didn't care about his condition, my left arm was seriously injured, I had to apply a tourniquet...

That's what I've been doing with the tourniquet.

"Are you okay?"

Panam was worried a lot, so hearing about sandhi in my opponent got into the conversation.

"Looks like I'll have to visit Vic and get my arm changed... got some shrapnel from a shotgun blast, but overall..."

"The building went into turmoil, they realized you were inside."

"What are we doing?"

"It's nothing."

Lucy was clearly calm.

"You put all three slivers in, so I'll easily misdirect them."

"That's good, I've got more of your slivers, connect to my eyes, we'll look around the office together, you tell me where to put them."

"Okay... uh, just a minute."

I took the injector out of the special pouch and injected it into my shoulder. Of course, it was usually injected into my chest, near my heart to be exact, so that all the drugs spread faster, but I didn't care much about the shrapnel now. I was much more concerned about the fact that my arm was hurting, and the injector has the properties of an anesthetic, among other things.

"Okay... I sighed and looked around the office I was in. The first thing that caught my eye was the gold pistol that was on the guy's desk."

"Yeah. you don't suffer from a small ego... when I approached the guy I saw that he was passed out. I wonder why? Arms and legs?"

I checked them and my initial findings were correct, it's chrome so its damage doesn't carry any harm.

"Tz..."

I noticed a wound from one of the shrapnel on his chest, it looked like something was damaged there... I took out another injector and injected it into the man, then took out my pistol and put more bullets in all the joints of his chrome.

"Okay, I've got them all facing the other way. We have about fifteen minutes before they realize I just activated the security system and let Becca play with it. So let's get to the office and get the hell outta here."

"Uh-huh...

I stood up and quickly walked around the office, showing Lucy all the equipment that was here, as well as the safe, which was glowing in one of the modes of my peepholes.

"So..."

Next, I was told exactly where to put the chips, and also asked to connect to the port of the safe that Lucy had opened just offhand...

"Uh. kush?"

I looked in surprise at the handful of money chips that were in the safe. There were also information chips and, best of all, it wouldn't take up much space in my bag!

"It looks like it does, but I wouldn't recommend it..."

"Hmm?"

"There may be chips for tracking disguised as money and without any hardware, so remotely understand which ones are for tracking and which ones are for storing funds will not work."

I sighed and slammed the safe shut.

"Kha..."

The man came to his senses and I went over to him and felt his pulse.

"Okay, all right, I'm out?"

"Yeah... Judy's gonna, uh."

I grabbed the man's arm, but stopped immediately. He might draw unnecessary attention to us by shouting. So I took another look around the office, but I didn't find anything, so I just walked around him, squatted down and took off his shoes, pulled off his socks, which I stuffed in his mouth, and used the laces from his shoes as a stopper that wouldn't let him spit out such a peculiar gag.

After thinking for a bit, I looked at the remaining chips from Lucy and inserted one of them into Houdini's socket.

"Lucy, make sure he can't call anyone."

"Okay..."

"The path is clear..."

Judy told me that.

I opened the door and walked down the corridor, dragging the man behind me, who was mooing, trying to draw attention to us. Except that all the guards were elsewhere, so I made my way to the elevator.

"It's too busy upstairs at the post. They're getting ready to greet anyone who comes up."

"Got it. slow me down for the floor."

The elevator obediently stopped, and I jumped slightly, knocking out the top hatch in the elevator, then got out on its roof, where I attached the harpoon and descended back into the elevator with the help of the harpoon lifted up my target.

"What about the floors above?"

"They are residential, but according to the data all the elevator doors there are welded shut, and there is a real armor plate blocking the passage on the stairwell."

"Okay, well, get the elevator up and open the doors. and let them shoot at the empty car."

As I said so it happened and further guards were just firing into the empty stall, shooting their ammunition.

"Okay, they're frozen. don't know what's going on."

"Two walk in your direction, three more stay where they are and two stand at the door, just like when you came through."

I sighed and activated the sandi, feeling a slight burning sensation in my back. So I'm already walking on the edge. A couple more minutes of personal time and I'll start burning my nerves, and my muscles are already sore, so they can't take this much use.

Sighing I jumped down the hatch and quickly unloaded the gun just shooting everyone then disabling the sandi.

Again I climb to the roof of the stall, detach the harpoon, lower the target into the stall and already with it I go towards the exit.

"How's it going in there, girls?"

"Our place?"

Panam grins.

"We've been quiet, you've attracted a little attention, but overall they haven't realized we're in their system. They don't have any good runners, though."

"There are runners, I'm just a better..."

Lucy's voice was quiet and calm. And she refuted Panam's words, who grumbled a little. As I left the building, I reactivated the sandhi and simply shot both of the big guys in the head. I don't like to do that, but it's not very convenient to knock out such opponents with one hand. And so...

Grabbing the target by the leg I dragged her through the alleys and soon Tortik pulled up to me with the ladies on board. I threw the target in the trunk and got in the front seat.