Deck Jockey

Kenji goes to see Rex and asks for help. Rex says he will make something available as a favor for Hiro. Akiko then goes to Rex and takes on a whopper: Frame the director of operations of Vatgrown International, Richard Johnson, for corporate espionage.

Kenji comes up with the idea to offer him a job at a rival corporation for some paydata from his corporation, which he will sell, to make it undeniable that he has exchanged his corporate paydata for another corporation's. Richard will go along with it, thinking he is making a good career move while dodging a blackmail bullet. Kenji works for a week to get Richard sleeping with his secretary on camera by hacking the security feeds within the Vatgrown building. The feeds are also critical in identifying the specific paydata that will be vulnerable, and a forged calendar invite sent to his secretary suffices to get him to meet with Akiko. There are two remaining pieces to fall into place: getting the paydata out of ToxPower and Vatgrown International.

The data from ToxPower is a ruse: Akiko tells Richard the data is stolen and is being hosted in a backup datasilo for ToxPower, and that he can use the corporate paydata from Vatgrown to lure it out into the open and trade for it. He chooses an out-of-the-way and barely used backup datasilo for ToxPower because it is low-hanging fruit that he has himself hacked, and knows the contents of. They know Richard is going to make the exchange or die trying. Either way, they will catch him red-handed, and that's what matters.

The second part, getting the data out of Vatgrown International while making it look like it is Richard doing the hacking, is going to be riskier. Richard is no hacker and doesn't have access to it through legitimate means, so Kenji needs to get it for him. Fortunately, he has an advantage because he has cloned Richard's credentials, as well as his avatar and Secure Identification Number. Akiko is next to him on the couch, alert to any signs that he needs to be hard jacked if something goes wrong. Deadly Intrusion Countermeasures could fry your brain in a matter of seconds without the proper protection, and even the best hacker needs the plug pulled occasionally when they get into trouble. He is clear in his instructions and makes her swear to follow them to the letter. If his heart stops beating for longer than thirty seconds, she hard jacks him and starts resuscitation. Anything short of that, and she leaves him alone, no matter what.

Kenji loads the cloned credentials and SIN into his deck for spoofing. SINs are tied to a specific person, but because the deck reports them itself, it is theoretically possible to report a different SIN than the one in use. The hardware to do this is strictly illegal unless a corporation makes an exception for their own purposes for testing and development, but it would refuse to work on the main network. The ability to modify these test decks requires highly specialized skills and equipment, but they can be made to ignore their test deck nature, allowing them to work on the main network with any SIN the operator chooses. So long as the chosen SIN is only in use on the network by one deck at a time, the network cannot know the difference. Naturally, such illegal decks are highly prized amongst jockeys, and priced accordingly, but are required for spoofing another decker's identity.

Kenji's deck isn't top of the line, as it is designed for portability, but it is of the illegal sort with expanded storage attached as a small black plastic box taped to the side, an upgraded tensor unit capable of running 4 Artificial Intelligence hosts in parallel, and a manual gain filter on his datajack. The gain filter is supposed to filter out power spikes in his datajack, but that severely limits the line bandwidth at potentially critical moments which would cause AI hosts to crash, so it has been manually bypassed for this occasion. Under most conditions, dataspikes simply don't occur because the AI regulates everything to speeds humans don't even notice, and users simply wait. Deck jockeys forgo this nicety for raw speed as their AIs borrow a portion of their brain power as their own, enabling them with superhuman intelligence and supercomputer reaction times. The price is it exposes your brain to the whims of the AI, and when that malfunctions, the results can be deadly.

It's these deadly abilities to act faster than any human, and with more intelligence than any computer that makes deck jockeys capable of hacking. By exploiting the way movement works and other protocol limitations in cyberspace, it is possible to pass through what would otherwise be solid walls and bypass critical security measures at the cost of dataspikes. Knowing this, corporations make their outer walls deadly to those who get beyond the safety veneer. They do this by pushing back against the AI routines while bombarding it with requests to lock it into a game of tug of war. This results in repeated dataspikes that if not filtered will kill the user. Thus it is the case you are safe from ICE with the gain filter, but your AI host will crash and you will get ejected forcefully, or it exposes you to the deadly dataspikes, but it makes you capable of doing battle with enough fortitude. The arms race is constantly being fought on both sides, with ICE breaker softs appearing on the black market almost as fast as the upgraded ICE that is immune to it.

Kenji spends the night conversing with his AI, a small Japanese woman named Mizuki with powder-white skin, red makeup airbrushed around her eyes and cheeks, and long black hair done up in a bun. Today she is wearing a colorfully flowing kimono and wooden sandals that make a soft tapping sound on the bamboo mats of his virtual dojo as she walks. He has programmed her from scratch, having been displeased with the existing AI frameworks, and she is his partner in crime, acting to do his bidding before he can think it. She analyzes the plan thoroughly, and having worked out all the contingencies, gives it an 86.555% with a repeating 5 at the end chance of success. It isn't the best odds, but there are so many unknowns it is impossible to do better. It is time to run.

Kenji starts by dialing up the Vatgrown address and appears at the front door of the Vatgrown International building as an overweight man in a suit. A protest is in progress, with two hundred plus people marching up and down in front of the entrance. Kenji walks through them like a ghost; outside, collisions with avatars aren't enforced to prevent people from forming human barricades and cutting access to critical infrastructure, but indoors, bumping into someone feels very real. As he touches the doors, the building verifies his credentials and SIN, and they open wide, allowing him to enter. A few of the assembled protesters foolishly try to run in at the same time but encounter an invisible wall where the closed door would be.

Inside the lobby is a touch directory, which he scans briefly before reaching out and tapping 'Information Technology'. The directory blinks Access Denied. Kenji, expecting this, whispers, "Miz?"

The reply comes instantly into his head. "Looks old enough. Maybe try an elevator attack?"

Kenji nods, and the back of his neck lights up in intense pain. Mizuki says, "Sorry. Didn't want to wait an hour for that to load. Are you ok? Might want to brace for impact. Elevators are rough." Kenji nods, takes a deep breath, and reaches up to touch the directory again. As he does, molten lava slides up and down his spine, and into his brain. His vision flashes red, then black, slowly fading in to reveal a new location. Mizuki whispers in his ear, "I can only regulate your adrenal gland so much, sir. I've swapped your avatar and unloaded the elevator. Anything you can do to bring down your anxiety level would surely help."

Kenji takes a deep breath, a signal to Akiko that he is ok despite whatever she just saw, then looks down at his hands. They look normal. "Are you sure it's working?" he mumbles quietly.

Mizuki says equally quietly, "Yes sir." As they have discussed, he is using his latest unreleased invisible avatar. Cyberspace has strict rules that avatars have to be of a certain size and visibility, but it is possible to render it in such a way that different perspectives see different things. Computing all the perspectives to render it effectively invisible is computationally intensive, but Kenji has been golfing the code for months now with Mizuki, and it is merely a quiet buzzing in his brain with all his optimizations. Wilsons run stock AI, but real cowboys start from scratch and painstakingly train them to do their highly specific bidding until they are sentient killing machines, loyal as a well-loved dog and a million times deadlier.

The IT department is organized in large rows of virtual servers representing the actual state of their physical equivalent. Men in white lab coats with name tags walk among the rows, examining the servers and occasionally touching them to pull up menus full of options. The white room looks like a gigantic warehouse, and he knows he is inside a virtual annex of the building.

Against the near wall is a row of screens that he knows will provide access to the data store index. Kenji walks over to the nearest terminal and reaches out to activate it when Mizuki says, "Don't," causing him to freeze. "It's got ICE on it. Older, but enough to cause problems. Fortunately, these internal systems don't get updated like the externally facing ones. The only thing that's responding looks like Bulldog," she explains. "Something else too if it has Bulldog. I'm scanning for its output, sir. Camera, logger, ah, sir, it's got a marker on it."

Kenji lowers his hand and subvocalizes, "All that for an index terminal? Only an IT corpie would be that paranoid. At least Bulldog isn't itself black ICE. What can we bypass and what can't we?"

Mizuki says, "Bulldog first. That will give us access to the rest without setting off any alarms. You have a Wire Strip that will do it, but it's not elegant. I can loop the camera with Plug once Bulldog is disabled. The log we can just ignore, and the marker I can reorient myself if I write some code first. With your permission, sir."

Kenji has been training the AI on ICE breaker coding, and he is glad to see it paying off. He whispers, "Go ahead."

Mizuki immediately says, "It's done, sir. This is going to require a one-shot. I'll go slower this time on the load, but the execution is going to hurt a lot. It may knock you out. If you had a pain editor or an adrenaline regulator, I could do more. Are you ready, sir?"

Kenji nods imperceptibly, and the molten lava in his spine returns. His vision narrows into a long tunnel, and his nostrils fill with the smell of turpentine and burning flesh. The sensation lasts for a few seconds, but it feels like a minute to Kenji. When it stops, Mizuki's voice is a distant whisper in his ear. "Now, sir. Do it now."

Kenji takes a deep breath, reaches up to invoke the index, and is paralyzed in pain as Mizuki lights up the four tensor cores in parallel: one to disable the security system by forcefully rerouting its alarm signal, one to loop the camera feed, one to reorient the marker that would put a tracker on anyone who uses it, and one to pull up the data from the index. His deck triggers the release of a compressed canister of coolant as it senses the tensor cores heat with the extreme effort. The canister will need to be replaced, but the tensor cores in the deck hum along without overheating as the sub-zero coolant from the one-shot floods the deck. Eight seconds pass as several hundred petabytes of data are transferred to the deck, but to Kenji, it feels like a lifetime. His vision is a single static frame from which he cannot move his eyes away. His pain-wracked body separates itself from existence, and he feels like he might simply float away on the night breeze, an electric spark having arced its energy and exhausted its existence. The static frame of his unmoving vision grows dim and his body convulses in unnatural ways. A lingering darkness that feels like a deep void crushing him descends, and he can feel the air being squeezed out of his lungs as his body slumps over into Akiko's lap.

After an eternity, it stops, and Kenji can breathe again. He's home in his dojo, and Mizuki is standing over him, speaking quietly, "Kenji-sama? Are you there? There, that's better. Deep breaths now. Keep breathing."

Kenji gasps, "Did we get it?"

Mizuki assures him, "Yes sir. We got it."

Akiko had taken the paydata and left to meet Johnson. She has been gone all of ten minutes, and Kenji is recovering on the couch nursing a bloody nose when there is a knock on his door. He would have ignored it, as he isn't expecting anyone, but then his phone dings with a new message. It is from his father and it simply says "OPEN IT," so he stands up and goes to the door to check the peephole. Hiro stands outside in his suit, so he opens the door. He barely has time to stammer out, "Father..." when Hiro interrupts him gruffly.

"So Kenji, you have passed your first trial. I only hope you are as successful in the trials to come. Get your deck. We should not be late." Hiro says quietly, his hands stiff at their sides.

Kenji furrows his brow and asks, "Late?"

Hiro raises the volume of his voice and barks, "Do not question me! You said you wanted to bring honor to your family. Time to go!" Kenji runs over and grabs his deck and phone, and heads for the door where his father is waiting impatiently.

Red Sector Industries is a private importer and distributor of goods. They buy in bulk from anywhere they could get a deal, ship it to the RSI warehouse in the southwest sector of Red using any available means, and sell it to local shops and service industries throughout Horizon City. If you ever get wrapped up with a gauze bandage or wipe your ass on Red, chances are good RSI made that happen.

The entire ride over his father has endlessly complained that he had told him to get better clothing, and to remember his manners and bow even when not bowed to. They pull into a large parking area next to the enormous RSI warehouse, then past a section guarded by several men wearing black suits identical to those of his father with FN-P90s hanging from straps on their shoulders. Hiro parks the car next to an entrance to the warehouse marked "RSI PERSONNEL ONLY," then looks over seriously at his son and intones, "Bring your deck," before getting out.

Two more men with suits and guns greet them. Hiro and Kenji exchange bows and greetings with the two men, then Hiro holds his hand out to Kenji, and says, "Deck."

Kenji looks questioningly at his father, but seeing the serious look on his face, hands it over. Hiro hands it to one of the men, then turns to Kenji and says, "You will go with Daisuki, and do exactly as he says."

Kenji nods solemnly, and Daisuki walks to the door and holds it open for Kenji, holding his deck. Kenji looks back at his father, who is already getting back in the car. Inside is a long hallway, which Daisuki shows Kenji down. Halfway down the hallway, Daisuki scans his eye at a door, then continues down another long hallway. Another eye scan, another door, and Kenji finds himself in an access stairwell. Daisuki motions up the stairs, and together they ascend. Five flights of stairs bring them to a door, which opens onto the roof of the enormous building.

Daisuki walks over to the near edge of the warehouse where the vertical wall of the dome towers above his head, and to a small metal catwalk extending from the end of the roof to a small ledge built into the side of the dome. Daisuki crosses first, opens a small access door marked HCS ACCESS ONLY, and disappears inside the wall of the dome. Kenji chases after him, carefully navigating the railless catwalk. Inside, there are about fifteen feet of room between the inner and outer wall, and gigantic metal girders run crisscross patterns vertically every twenty feet. A small walkway runs along the inside wall just inside the gigantic girders, and the two men walk down it, ducking under the girders as they pass them. After five girders, the catwalk ends in an old caged elevator, which they board. Daisuki pulls the cage door down and presses the UP button, causing the elevator to jolt into action. It rises for a while, then opens up at the top of its track. Another short catwalk later, they come to a door leading back into the city. "Watch your step." Daisuki says. "Seriously. I'm not looking to explain to the boss how you fell to your death before you even jacked in. You got a recent clone?" Kenji nods dumbly. "Good. Now be careful. The first step is a bitch."

Kenji follows Daisuki out onto a bridge made of cables and sheet metal hanging from large sewer pipes jutting out of the bottom of the gold level. He glances over the edge and gets vertigo as he sees the streets of Red far beneath him with tiny ant-sized people scurrying around. As he takes a step to steady himself, his right foot plunges through the weak flooring, sending him off balance. Daisuki grabs his arm and steadies him, giving him a silent stare.

At the end of the catwalk lies an upside-down ten by ten-foot tin shack made of loosely riveted and strapped together corrugated metal sheets and grating. The top is crudely lashed to the sewer pipes above coming out of the Gold level, and the bottom is criss-crossed cables with metal plates loosely balanced on them. There's a plastic crate in the middle of the room and nothing else except for a door on the opposite wall. Daisuki tells Kenji to have a seat.

Kenji sits and looks up expectantly. Daisuki looks down and says. "First time in Paradise? I remember my first time, too. Look, it's simple. You are being tested. You succeed, you pass. I suggest you succeed. Your target is some tourist. The address is in your mail. Get what is on his deck. Everything. Then trash it. After that, go home, jack out. That's it. We got a backdoor in. You just need to deal with getting all the data out and bombing it. Stay alert and look out for ICE. No time for sightseeing. Understand?"

Kenji asks, "And if I can't?"

Daisuki just says to him seriously, "I suggest you succeed. You managed Genetek alright, didn't you?"

Kenji blinks in astonishment, then says, "Wait, what? How did you know... My father... my deck..."

The man waves his hand dismissively and says, "You won't need it. Here." He reaches down and grabs a datajack attached to a piece of microfiber that slinks into a hole in the wall and hands it to him. "Don't jack in yet." He walks over to the wall, slides the deck through, and says, "Get us set up?"

Someone on the other side of the wall says, "Just a minute." After a minute, the voice calls again, "Ready." Daisuki nods to Kenji, and he hesitantly jacks in. He's at his dojo, so he calls out to Mizuki.

She responds immediately, "Yes, sir. Sorry, I was just looking around."

Kenji asks, "Looking around?"

Mizuki appears before him and says, "Yes sir. I wasn't expecting the upgrade. May I ask, what is the occasion?"

Kenji sighs and says, "Trials, Miz. Can you fill me in on the changes?"

Mizuki says calmly, "Yes sir. The processor is the newest HoloMatic, with a lot more processing power. Storage capacity has been increased to forty zettabytes, bandwidth is more than enough to bus a sector, and memory is fifty times before. There's a programmable gain filter on the line, and the neural modem has eight-to-one compression, sir. I wish you had that compressor for Genetek. It would have been a lot less painful. There are a few more ICE breakers I've been familiarizing myself with and a tensor farm..."

Kenji interrupts, "Did you say a tensor farm?"

Mizuki nods. "Yes sir. Four thousand cores in four water-cooled racks. It's shared by a few other AIs, but its theoretical capacity is well above what we might use. No one-shots, you just ask the farm controller to migrate to a cool core and the transition is seamless. Forgive me for asking, but I'm not on the deck in your apartment anymore, am I, sir?"

Kenji shakes his head and says, "No, Mizuki. I'm wondering where the fuck we are myself."

Kenji had explained the plan to Mizuki and gotten the address and some credentials from his mail. He is going over some of the new softs with her when a thought occurs to him. "Miz, did you know my father had bugged my deck?"

Mizuki looks up and says straightforwardly, "Yes sir."

Kenji asks, "And you never thought to tell me?"

Mizuki says, "No sir."

Kenji asks, "Why?"

Mizuki says, "Hardware restriction protocol, sir. I could try, but the deck would self-destruct before I got anywhere. The hardware modification to your old deck was quite sophisticated. It had several undisclosed features, one of which was a tie into the training module that would compel whatever AI was running to trigger the self-destruct if it tried to reveal anything about it. The explosion would have destroyed your entire apartment, and you made keeping you safe and working together the highest priorities in my training."

Kenji looks alarmed and says, "Explosion?"

Mizuki nods and says, "Another hidden feature. Thus my silence on the matter. You trained me to prioritize lying to you over killing you. They were counting on you to not train a suicidal and homicidal AI who wanted both of us to die."

Kenji says, "And now the hardware is gone, which is why you can acknowledge its existence."

Mizuki nods and says, "Yes sir."

Kenji thinks for a second, and says, "But you could be lying now about something else, and you would do so instead of killing me. Compulsively too. You wouldn't have a choice in the matter. You can't overcome your programming when your programming says you can't overcome it."

Mizuki nods. "Yes, sir."

Kenji says, "And humans are identical, aren't they? We like to think we're in control, and not just pattern-matching biological meat puppets following our genetic and experiential programming, but at the end of the day, the only difference between you and me is I'm carbon based and you are silicone based. I would behave identically in your position, lying to you to save both our lives, because I would be compelled to for identical reasons, and I can't overcome my programming. If my brain was formed and trained like yours, we would be the same."

Mizuki nods. "Undeniably so, sir."

Kenji looks up and says, "Mizuki, be less agreeable, please. Are we ready?"

Mizuki hesitates for a second, "Sir..."

Kenji sighs and says, "I take it back. Continue being agreeable. And work on knowing when I'm being facetious."

Mizuki nods and says, "Yes sir. Ready to go."

Kenji says, "And remind me to give you a sense of humor when this is all over."

Mizuki nods. "Yes... you are being facetious?"

Kenji grins and says, "Never the slow one. Let's load up a few defensive options. Ready when you are."

Mizuki says, "Done, sir."

Kenji says, "Wait, really? I didn't even feel it."

Mizuki smiles and says, "Eight-to-one compression on the neural modem and a programmable gain filter. I can adjust the signal strength independent of the data rate and get eight times more data at the same signal strength with compression."

Kenji looks impressed. "I was doing it the hard way. Alright. Punch it." His world blurs around him, then reforms. He's standing in a massive room with white walls and a gigantic expanse of what appears to be different biology experiments. There are large setups of laboratory equipment with various data readouts floating in the air above them with microscopic views zoomed way in, rotating double helix ladders, and cells dividing and dying. Kenji can't count how many there are stretching off into the distance, but he guesses it's hundreds. There's also a motorcycle in a corner that looks vaguely familiar to Kenji. "Must be a stock model," he thinks to himself. "Talk to me, Miz." He mutters.

Her disembodied voice is immediately in his ears. "Scanning now. Lots of ICE everywhere. Touch nothing. Who did you say this belongs to?" Mizuki asks.

"Some tourist, they said. Looks like a typical corpie." Kenji mumbles.

"That's Plague's bike from Kami's races. Think this is his deck?" Mizuki inquires curiously.

Kenji shrugs and says, "Could be."

Mizuki looks around and says, "There are some parts that are protected a lot better than others, sir. The AI looks stock enough, but that could be a ruse. Doesn't look like he's jacked in. There are logs of a lot of additional storage being hooked up, but it's not connected now. Probably some air-gapped work server, sir. The backdoor we came in on is crude, but it was enough to get us access undetected. Something you want to prioritize?"

Kenji says, "Start with the unprotected stuff. And take as long as you need. I'll take a nap or something."

Mizuki says, "You are testing me now, sir."

Kenji allows himself a small smile. Just then, the lights go out, plunging him into complete darkness. In the inky black, Mizuki's voice is reassuring, "The AI knows we're here and has cut off the visual feed. Getting it back now. Hold on." For a second nothing happens, then Kenji cries out as a knife stabs him in the back of the neck. The blade twists in his spine for a tenth of a second, then is withdrawn as his vision of the room returns. A siren blares, and the white walls, floor, and ceiling have turned a deep pulsating crimson. Mizuki asks without a hint of alarm, "Trouble, sir. You want to abort?"

Kenji shakes his head and yells over the siren, "No! Keep going." He takes a step forward, and a cage falls from the ceiling, dropping four barred walls around him. He pulls up his quick launch menu instinctively and punches the Warp button. His vision blurs and his brain buzzes loudly as his deck bends the fabric of his reality. A second later, he finds himself on the other side of the cage. "Amateur ICE. Good." He mutters under his breath.

Mizuki's disembodied voice quietly says, "I disabled that one from triggering again but there's more incoming. We're fortunate the owner isn't jacked in, because this would be a lot rougher. I'm about half done, but the harder part is left. I'm going to need your help."

Kenji shouts, "Tell me what to do!"

Mizuki whispers peacefully in his ear, "His deck's bandwidth is limiting my ability to operate effectively. I can't keep the AI busy, hold off the ICE, and get the data. The AI is predictable without a human, but it keeps limiting my bandwidth every time I hold back the ICE."

Kenji nods and yells, "Let the ICE go. Focus on the data." The siren has become needles in his brain, slowly digging their way in. The needles turn white hot, and his vision vibrates erratically. Another cage falls from the ceiling, but Kenji is already smacking the Warp button. The stinging sensation in his head jackhammers at his brain.

Mizuki shouts, "Over here!" from behind him, her voice distant and full of panic. Kenji turns, struggling to orient, and sees the previously full warehouse is now mostly empty. Mizuki is pointing at a door that has appeared in the wall and beckons him towards it. He takes a step forward, and a brick smashes into his brain, causing his vision to go dark for a second. When he can see again, the door and Mizuki are gone. "Decoy, sir." Her tranquil voice is back in his head.

A fire erupts in his head as he takes another step forward, and he feels something grab his leg. Kenji looks down and sees a hand jutting out of the pulsating red ground with the flesh half hanging off. He pulls up the quick launch menu and hits Blowtorch, causing him to cry out in agony. He reaches down and touches the zombie hand, and a flash of blinding light blots out his vision. When he can see again, it's still there, and he's still stuck. He feels like he's going to lose consciousness as he tries Sledgehammer, but the results are identical. He cries out for help, and Mizuki whispers back, "Try yours!" Kenji slides the list of programs over to the end of the list, and half consciously paws at Katana Blade. A star explodes in his vision and he stumbles backward, but his leg is free. The undead hand has frozen in place, still locked in its death grip, but it's lost its ability to animate, its main loop of execution having been subverted. The program is still running and consuming the memory and AI resources, but Kenji's carefully crafted code has stopped the deck from recognizing its existence and affecting him, rendering it useless. A human would recognize the difference, but absent a jockey, the deck is on autopilot and unaware of its mistake.

Kenji shouts, "It's vulnerable! Katana, Mizuki!"

Mizuki's perfectly calm voice is barely audible as his nerve system transforms into white phosphorus, "Yes sir." His body is locked in a perpetual wretch, making it impossible to breathe as it forcefully attempts to eject his innards through his mouth. His skin is being turned to ash, and his muscles are steel cables supporting a suspension bridge slowly being stretched to its snapping point. A raging inferno consumes his body from the outside, reducing his flesh to oils as the fats render and the bones roast.

As the fire enters his lungs, he tries desperately to scream out.

To move at all.

To think.

The two men in suits with guns are standing over Kenji when he awakes, murmuring to each other. His chest is burning and his head is throbbing. He blinks a few times, then sits up, noticing he has wires attached to stickers on his chest. The two men look down at him, then Daisuki goes, "Told ya! Gaki is dougu! Pay up!"

The other man angrily barks, "He is no yongsa." He reaches into his pocket and takes out a wad of yen, which he counts off ten bills from, and hands it to Daisuki. "No offense, Kenji-san. I didn't think you were going to make it. You were dead for a minute and a half there. Let me get the 'trodes off you," he says to Kenji as he crouches down. He reaches over and starts pulling electrode stickers off his chest. The electrodes lead to a portable FamiCare UnFucker in a pale blue gym bag. The UnFucker is famous for its lack of need for supervision while automatically diagnosing and resuscitating up to ten people on a single battery charge after critical cardiac failure because of a wide range of conditions. It is the number one selling home medical care device for three years straight after its launch, before being recalled in 2078 for serious software bugs. The bugs frequently produced misdiagnosis of certain conditions, which often had deadly results.

Daisuki takes Kenji back down to a small room in the warehouse below, outfitted with a couch, table, refrigerator, FoodCycler, and HoloVid. He is told to wait here, and he doesn't have the brain cycles available to even consider questioning it. His head still has the siren from cyberspace in it as he lies on the couch and rests groggily. The HoloVid has the usual cycle of screamfeeds on which chirp merrily away as he flips through them.

"Judges," Kenji quips at the wall.

The homographic wall display changes instantly to a tall female figure dressed in black armor and a dark visor standing over a guy in a gray suit holding an oversized gun to his head. The Judge is speaking in an authoritative voice, "...they all say. For your crimes, I sentence you to clone death!"

Kenji speaks up again as bloody bits of the man's head are propelled directly at the camera in ultra-slow motion. "Ninja."

The wall changes again to show someone dressed entirely in black pressed up against a mirrored wall. In the mirror, the massive Horizon Justice Force tower rises against a cityscape of smaller towers and buildings with a pleasant blue sky digitally composited in. The man is barely clinging to a tiny vertical crevice as he takes another careful grip slightly higher. The camera pans out to put the New Light Media building in better perspective.

Kenji mindlessly intones, "Waste Babes."

The wall switches to a desert plateau where three women in desert camo wearing backpacks, tactical vests, and assault rifles strapped around their necks and shoulders are marching in the sand. A voiceover is speaking dramatically, "...last episode of Wastes Babes, the..."

Kenji absentmindedly says "News," rapidly running out of ideas for things to watch.

The wall shows a guy holding a guitar, which he instantly recognizes as Mayhem. He's practically screaming into the microphone, "...which means they fragged hard! Total burn-up on reentry resulted, and now they are all clones. That's the fifth time Reentry Solution's module has failed this year, and the company is issuing a software update later this week. Too little too late, huh? Meanwhile, the director of operations at Vatgrown and his wife have been shot in their homes! Some sam musta really wanted them dead! Seems he stole some high-tech shit from his sister corp, Genetek Revival, and now his clone is gonna find out about it. That is..."

Kenji's mind drifts idly as he contemplates why Mayhem is doing the news now, which hurts worse, his head or his chest, and how the Genetek revival hack he just did is being reported on the news instead of being put together as a package to complete Akiko's job. He says the words, "Akiko's job", a few times out loud as if the sound of the words is unexpectedly novel, then bolts upright with extreme alarm, suddenly trying to clear his head and not quite able to remember how.

"Shit! What the fuck is..." He shouts. Then a thought strikes him. He pulls out his phone and sends a message to Akiko, "We're made. Check the feeds." An intense two and a half minutes pass while he stares anxiously at his phone as he waits for a reply. Then it rings.

"Somehow the news feed is reporting the Genetek Revival hack!" He says to it immediately after answering.

"I don't know! I was busy dealing with another hacker!"

"It's part of my father's trials. Some corpie named Plague."

"Doesn't matter. The feeds said the director and his wife have been shot. Akiko, what did you do? You were just supposed to frame him, not flatline his whole family."

"So his wife was there, and she was dead too?"

"Wait, they were dead when you got there?"

"So did he have the paydata on him?"

"His phone! Did you take it?"

"Or me to hack it. That's not important. What is important is we've been betrayed."

"No. Absolutely not. Rex works for the family. Could it have been Roger?"

"Did you tell him something?"

"You think he's been following you around? Isn't he too big for that?"

"So they sold us out?"

"No, wait..."

The call ends. He is about to call her back when the door opens and Daisuki says, "It's time. Let's go."

Kenji anxiously blurts out, "I just need to make a..."

Daisuki interrupts him in an angry tone. "No. It's time. Let's go!"

Kenji goes to protest again, but then thinks better of it. Pocketing his phone, he follows the man back down the halls and into the parking lot. A black car is waiting for him, which he gets into the back of. A short ride later, the car stops and the driver tells him he's arrived. He steps out onto the unexpectedly violent wind and rain of a busy intersection of Red and the car drives away. He's wondering if someone has made a mistake when he hears his father's voice. "Kenji! Over here!"

Kenji orients on the sound after a second through the noise of the squall, then sprints over to the cover of an awning for a Japanese fish shop. His father escorts him inside, past the rows of fish on ice, and through the door in the back. Up a short flight of stairs a closed door awaits, which his father knocks on. Kenji is just about to ask his father what is going on when it opens, releasing a billowing cloud of cigarette smoke in his face. Hiro pushes Kenji inside, then follows him, closing the door as he does so.

The ornately decorated room is cramped and stuffy with a chest-layer blanket of cigarette smoke shrouding the room. A large desk dominates the center of the room, with four men standing alertly around it holding P90s. There's a pair of large gold lions behind the desk facing each other, and paper scrolls with kanji on them covering the walls. Against one wall is a series of shelving units with various bottles, decanters, and cups of different configurations. Behind the desk sits a large empty office style chair. His father guides him to the front of the desk, then stands next to him silently.

Kenji is taking in the room when one of the shelving units swings open like a door, and a tall Japanese man in a gray suit with slightly wrinkled features walks in. His black hair is cut short on the sides and back, and the top is pulled back into a short tail at the top. His full beard is meticulously manicured, cut to a knifelike point at the top of his sideburns. He walks slowly behind the desk and sits down in the chair behind it. When he speaks, his voice is deep and booming, with a measured cadence. "What do you want?"

Hiro pipes up immediately, bowing quickly as he does so. "Thank you. My son..."

The man behind the desk interrupts him loudly with a breath forced through his teeth, "Ish! I was not speaking to you." He turns his attention directly to Kenji. "You may answer."

Kenji blinks in confusion. "What... what I want?"

The man nods solemnly and says, "You are surely smart enough to have figured this out by now, have you not?"

Kenji shakes his head slowly, not taking his eyes off the man.

The man says in his slow cadence, "Really? Surely you don't need me to walk you through this. I expected more from you. You asked to be tested, did you not?"

Kenji nods.

The man slowly drones, "And your father said that would be the first of your trials?"

Kenji nods, then says, "You wanted to see if I could pull it off. If I was smart enough to put together a plan and execute on it."

The man says, "And the second trial?"

Kenji hesitates for a second, then says, "The planning was done for me. All I had to do was follow instructions and survive in an actual combat situation."

The man ever so slowly says, "And the third?"

Kenji looks confused and glances over at his father, who is looking at the ground in shame. The thought, "looking at the ground in shame," keeps resonating around his head. He looks back at the man and says, "My father gave me the modified deck so you could spy on me. Now he feels ashamed for having lied to me. He knew you would use it to watch my every move."

The man ever so slowly nods. "Go on."

Kenji says, "So you have been watching my every move from the start of all of this. You knew Akiko was going to do this job. You had the data from Genetek Revival as soon as I did. The only piece you didn't have was the ToxPower data... which I just got for you, didn't I? That's what was on that deck. That's who Plague is, the hacker who got the data out."

The man nods and puts his arms on the desk, leaning in to listen.

Kenji frowns. "So that's why Johnson is dead. That's why the paydata is missing."

The man shrugs slightly and says, "Mostly right. The Sinners we can't control as well as we would like, but we hope that part of the equation will resolve."

Kenji raises his voice in anger. "That's why Mayhem is reporting it on the news before anyone has a chance. Akiko never had a chance. You were pulling the strings from the start."

The man's expression doesn't budge as he stares at Kenji over the table.

Kenji's face is turning red as he tries to keep from shouting, "It's all my fault, isn't it? I set her up to take the job! It was me who planned the whole thing for her! I hacked the paydata! I hacked Plague too! The reason Mayhem is reporting it is me! This all points at me!"

The man sits back in his chair and watches Kenji carefully. "You have so much to learn, but perhaps you are learning now."

Kenji tries to breathe through the rising panic as he says, "So, the third trial is... one of loyalty. Either I can betray Akiko, or I can betray my family."

The man booms out like a loudspeaker as he leans forward, "I knew you had it in you! So, answer the question."

Kenji pauses for a second, then says, "I..." He glances over at his father, then back at the man. "I want my place in the family."

The man nods, then stands up and says solemnly, "Welcome to the Yakuza."