Chapter 6 - The Heist

Discarded metal

Chapter 6 - The Heist

"take it or leave it" 

Gloria is pacing back and forth in what seems to be a hotel room. She is alone, the room is bare with just a bed and a big holoscreen on the wall facing it. 

"Damn! He got cold feet… I'm going to fry him!" She says out loud. 

Suddenly a light blinks behind her ear, in an instant she picks the call. 

"Give me good news, Pulse!" She says with a clear hint of nervousness in her voice. 

"We are in, the rat sent us the key!" Pulse answers. 

"Send it, it's only valid till next week, we will need to move fast." She says. 

"I'm sending it right now, when do you want to move in?" Pulse asks. 

"We get in tomorrow, we don't need the crew, you will cover my back. In and out, piece of cake." Gloria answers as she receives the key. 

She transfers it on a shard plugged behind her ear. 

"You got it, boss. I will get us a ride and pick you up tomorrow morning at 8." he says. 

The call closes and silence invades the room. 

Gloria unslots the shard and holds it in front of her face, staring at it. 

The key to Psysoft's network… 

Her plan is pretty simple: plug in from an access point inside the Psysoft's tower and hit the vault of the network. 

She will catch whatever she can from their secure storages. A corpo like Psysoft should be the paradise for any netrunner. 

Getting in using an employee's key will allow her to remain undetected until she hits the vault, after that it will be open hunting. 

Psysoft makes the best softwares, their netrunners are the best out there. 

Gloria lays on the bed and stares at the ceiling. 

"It has to work." She thinks out loud. 

She replays her plan in her head over and over again. 

-Getting in dressed as corpo 

- no ID check on the first level 

- hack my way to the maintenance network 

- taking control of the cameras

- making us invisible

- get to the office floor and use our rat's workstation

- use the key and from there, break into their vault. 

"Almost too easy." She thinks with a big smile on her face. 

She closed her eyes to get some sleep but that night her brain didn't stop repeating her plan over and over again.

In the morning, as she finishes preparing herself in the bathroom, a call from Pulse. 

"You ready, Boss?" He asks. 

"Almost, keep the ride running, I will be down in 5 minutes." She answers as she closes the call. 

She finishes applying her makeup to finalize her corporate look. 

A blue corpo suit with an assorted skirt and high heels, her hair perfectly tied up in a ponytail and flawless makeup. 

She walks out of the room and gets out of the hotel, Pulse is waiting for her in a black car. 

She gets in and Pulse whistles in appreciation. 

"Drive, you idiot!" She says angrily. 

"You got it, boss." he says with a smile. 

The car starts moving and they drive through the city. The high buildings in the background are the trademark of the corporate districts. 

They stop in front of Psysoft tower and get out of the car. 

The front doors are made of transparent glass and a big panel is on top of them with the Psysoft logo. 

A crowd of employees are entering the building, ready to start their day. 

Gloria and Pulse are dressed for the part, they blend in perfectly. As they walk toward the doors, the car drives itself away. 

They pass the doors without problems, security is minimal on the ground floor. Psysoft often holds product demonstrations for the public on the ground floor. 

They keep walking, following the crowd inside the ground floor. Elevators are located at each corner, the whole floor is composed of several exposition booths and a circular reception desk in the middle. 

Gloria and Pulse walk straight through the area until they reach doors on the back wall, they quickly get in the maintenance areas. 

In the morning the maintenance areas are pretty empty, Gloria easily finds an entry point on the wall and plugs in. 

Pulse keeps looking around, making sure nobody comes to disturb. Gloria's eyes start blinking as she gets inside the maintenance's network. 

"Piece of cake." She says as she unplugs. 

"You're done?" Pulse asks. 

"Yeah, we are invisible to their cameras, let's go." She says as she pushes him to walk away. 

They quickly walk out of the maintenance areas and start to queue up with the other employees to get in an elevator. 

Psysoft uses facial recognition inside the elevators to give access to different employees' workplaces. 

Gloria has left a program in the maintenance network that will trick the cameras to give them access to the office floor. 

The elevator doors open to a big atrium with open ways at every cardinal point that lead to the office spaces. 

They walk through the atrium and take the direction of their mole's workstation. 

They enter a small office space with a desk and a workstation on it. 

Gloria hurries and sits at the desk while Pulse keeps guard at the door. She plugs herself in the workstation and uses the key to get access to the network. 

Pulse starts to look nervous and keeps guarding the door. 

"Now, the fun begins." Gloria says as her eyes blink. 

She is projected inside the network, a huge highway of information, it eerily resembles a city.

She starts looking for the vault, it's a node that needs to be cracked in order to gain access to the protected areas of the network. 

"Hurry up, boss! I don't want to overstay our welcome…" Pulse says nervously. 

"Shut up, it won't be long, just chill!" She answers. 

She goes through the network with a single goal in mind, finding the vault. She finds it pretty quickly, Psysoft doesn't bother hiding it, they are very confident with their cyber security. 

"They don't even hide… Arrogant bastards!" She says angrily. 

Gloria starts cracking the protection on the vault. 

She is fueled with anger, she hates the corporations and considers them all guilty for the suffering of the people in the commons. 

Her motivation is more about hurting them than really stealing, strike their wallets. 

"Oh shit!" Gloria suddenly says. "I'm in and they didn't even realize yet!" 

"No way?! Bloody hurry up then, take whatever you can!" Pulse says as he is getting more nervous. 

Gloria ignores him and starts to browse all the secret projects of the corporation, security softwares, cybernetic controllers, netrunner's cyber deck softwares… 

She is like a child who just broke into a toy store. 

She suddenly stops in front of a folder that looks heavily encrypted. 

"I'm taking that!" She says as she starts copying it on a shard. 

Several new entries make their way through the network. 

"Shit! I have security on my ass!" She says angrily. 

"Damn, get out of here!" Pulse says very nervously. 

Gloria ignores him. 

She quickly deploys some firewalls to protect her node, sending the network into a frenzy. 

"Intruder alert" a message keeps repeating inside the network. 

"No way! I'm not leaving empty handed!" Gloria says with more anger in her voice. 

File transfer 30%...

She quickly moves back to the vault's node and starts duplicating it on the network. 

"Let me show them a little trick, losers!" She says out loud. 

"What the hell are you playing down there? Hurry!" Pulse gets extremely nervous. 

The office is awfully quiet compared to what's happening in the network. 

Gloria not only duplicates the vault node but she also launches attacks on each of them, making the network believe that there are multiple threats. 

File transfer 60%... Node under attack… Fake node identified… Proceeding to the next… 

"I bought us time! Hahaha!" She laughs hysterically. 

File transfer 90%... Threat identified… Entry point… Office floor… 

"Shit! They got our position!" She says with a change of tone in her voice.

Pulse takes out a gun from inside his vest, releases the safety and cocks it, making sure the bullet is in the chamber. 

"You better hurry out!" he says. 

File transfer… Complete…

Gloria quickly unplugs from the workstation and hurries to the door of the office next to Pulse. 

"I got it! Let's get out!" She says as she pushes him to move. 

Pulse hides his gun behind his back and they start walking through the quiet office floor. 

"Elevators?" Pulse asks. 

"Stairs! They found my entry point, they probably sent security." Gloria says as she pushes him towards the service stairs. 

They get into the staircase and start to run down as fast as they can, stopping at any suspicious noises. 

It feels like an eternity for them but they actually reach the ground floor pretty fast. Pulse slowly pushes the door open to check if the security has been sent to the ground floor. 

"Nothing, it looks like nothing happened…" He whispers. 

Gloria pushes him out of the way and walks out into the ground floor like nothing happened at all. 

Pulse catches up with her and walks by her side through the entire floor. 

The ground floor is undisturbed by what happened in the network and they walk quietly outside the building. 

Pulse calls the car with his Neural implant as they keep walking to the side of the road. 

"Shit… Did we pull it off?" He asks her. 

Gloria just nods as the car arrives and they quickly get in, driving away from the building. 

Gloria explodes in laughter as she takes out the shard from behind her ear. 

"They never saw it coming!" She says between laughs. 

Pulse follows her in her laughter, releasing the built up tension. 

The car drives through the corporate districts, high towers covering most of the sky. They pass a guarded gate that separates the commons from the corporate districts. 

The streets change, more people, street vendors, more traffic… 

They slowly drive until they arrive at what seems to be a deserted warehouse. The walls are painted with colorful murals. 

The car slows down and the gate of the warehouse automatically opens. They drive through and the car stops inside. 

They both get out and walk to the back office of the warehouse. 

The office is small but there's a sofa taking up one corner and a big desk with a holoscreen linked to several machines on shelves. 

They enter, Pulse takes off his jacket and throws it to the sofa before letting himself fall on it. 

"So? What did you get?" He asks. 

Gloria sits at the desk and inserts the shard in one of the machines. 

"I'm actually not sure, but it's heavily encrypted." She says as she turns the holoscreen on. 

"Gotta be good!" Pulse says. 

Gloria nods and starts to run all sorts of programs on the shard. 

"It's not a regular file… It's gonna take forever… You can go, I will call you when it's cracked." She says. 

Pulse nods and stands up, leaving his jacket on the sofa. He waves at her as he gets out of the small office. 

Gloria focuses all her attention on the screen, several programs are running at the same time, trying to crack the encryption of the file. 

She stares at the screen blankly, wondering what could be hiding in the file. 

"What did I take from them that seems so valuable?" She wonders. 

Her imagination starts racing, thinking that she scored one of the biggest secrets of Psysoft corporation. A satisfied grin appears on her face. 

Hours pass with no results, She starts a new batch of programs and rests her head on the desk. 

Her eyes never leave the screen, she watches as the programs run through encryption possibilities, they all fail one after the other. 

The daylight is gone and it's now night time. 

Her eyes are having a hard time staying open, she closes them uncontrollably, feeling tired from the day. 

Slowly, darkness surrounds her and she falls asleep, resting on the desk. 

Lights blinking from the screen illuminate the room, suddenly the lights stop and the screen turns off on its own, plunging the room into darkness. 

Complete darkness…