Shadowmen joined teams because there was no way that one person could cover every angle. However, sometimes a job needed more hands than even a full team could provide. In those situations, it was not uncommon for a team to subcontract for work. The three most common reasons someone would subcontract on a run were because they needed specialized help, they needed to hit multiple points at once, or for someone to run a distraction.
Specialized help was obvious. If there was a magical threat, like spirits or something that needed checking on the astral plane, no one else on the team could back me up, so I might need to contract out and get some help. Same with Twilight in the Matrix. No one else on the team had the tech or skills to really back her up in the digital world.
Sometimes, a job would require you to hit multiple sites at once. One example from the Beta was when we needed to coordinate a strike on a corporate headquarters with another hit on an obscure research facility. We needed to take out the executive behind the research, and destroy the research itself, but if we took too long between the hits, then either the executive would get behind a small army of guards, or the research would be moved to a more secure facility, where we wouldn’t be able to get to it. So, two teams, for two jobs.
And then, there were situations like this one. We needed a distraction, someone who could cause a big headache for the online security while we got into place, preferably setting up the on-site spider for an easy hit from Twilight. She couldn’t do the job herself, because she would be busy on overwatch, guiding Shadowgirl through the facility, to plant the commlink on our real target, allowing her to access the inner network at her leisure.
We’d just finished a run to AmmuNation, one of the Mars Industries subsidiaries that could be counted on to sell you any (legal) weapons and ammo, so long as you had something that vaguely looked like a proper permit. Basically, if you had even the weakest Rating 1 fake SIN and Rating 1 fake weapons permit? You were golden, for any weapons or ammo that was ‘Restricted’ or less, though finding the rarer stuff (with higher Availability ratings) was sometimes tricky. Getting a few flashbangs and thermal smoke grenades for the group? No problem.
Anyways, we had just finished picking up the party favors when Babydoll called, giving us the time and ‘place’ of the meet with the Reality Hackers. The time was simple enough: two hours from now. As for the place? Well, like Babydoll predicted, it was in a matrix club. A quick discussion, and we agreed that Sexkitten would join me in the club, while Berzerker watched over our bodies, and the rest of the team continued their scouting work.
Matrix clubs were basically the same as their real-life counterparts. You had all sorts, including nightclubs, dance clubs, comedy clubs, and more. However, you also had a bunch of clubs where, quite frankly, the hijinks that went on in the node were things that could only happen in the Matrix, since, even with magic, the physics of reality just couldn’t support that level of craziness.
One of the best examples of that was the famous Waterlily Lounge, Seattle’s premier Matrix club. Each ‘room’ of the club was a pool, or pond, and everyone’s avatars were wearing swimwear by default. Going from room to room involved waterfalls. Only the water sometimes ‘fell’ towards the sky, taking you through a portal to the other room. The unique (proprietary) views, along with seeing all the avatars in skimpy beach wear was one of the reasons the club had survived the years after the Crash mostly unscathed. Fun in tropical sun with good drinks and plenty of flesh on display were always a hit with the public.
We were not meeting there. Instead, we were going to a place no less well-known, but a lot less well-respected. Rule #34 was a Matrix club that brought the horny side of the Matrix to life. A strictly ‘clothing optional’ kind of Matrix club, they also had no restrictions on what your avatar could be, or look like, and they didn’t need to be the same as your ‘real-life’ body at all. It was always a gamble if you were talking to a man, woman, both, or neither when chatting someone up in Rule #34, but the kind of crowd that went there didn’t care about such things.
Of course, Rule #34 wasn’t just a digital sex club. It certainly was that, but that wasn’t all it was. It was actually one of the more popular meeting spots for those who could stomach the array of fetishes on full display, which ranged from the vanilla to things that would be capital crimes in most any real-world country, including things like snuff and vore. However, if you could stomach the perversion on display, then you had a place where, even if someone managed to record a conversation, there was so much going on that would have to be edited out that any final product would be completely inadmissible as evidence, as there would be no way to prove it wasn’t tampered with. That meant some criminals, who didn’t care if people called them freaks, used it as a place to do their meets.
That perversion was on full display as Sexkitten and I loaded into the club. The act on the ‘main stage’ was a fascinating recreation of some comic from before the Matrix had VR, back when it was called the ‘internet’. Three people were on the stage, a man and two women, all naked. The blonde woman was on top of the black-haired one, and they were nicely eating each other out while the man was hilt deep in the blonde’s backside. The thing is, he was oiling the blonde up with what looked like cooking oil. Which made the eight-foot metal pole with a sharp spike at the end resting on the table next to them a somewhat ominous sight.
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“Mmm, tempting as that scene looks, I’m afraid we aren’t here for that,” Sexkitten said, with a hint of regret.
“That the kind of thing you’re into?”
“Well, not in real life, no. But in a virtual world inside a game world? You can try out all the crazy things you’d never do in real life, with no consequences! Don’t tell me you never went to any of the clubs like this during the beta!’
“Not really my scene, honestly. Plus, it isn’t like I had trouble finding companionship of all kinds, when I wanted it.”
“Ah, yes. Being the only male player in the whole of the Seattle server during the beta would have given you plenty of choices. So, how many people in our team have you done it with?”
“Just Berzerker and Shadowgirl. Why, don’t tell me you’re jealous, or going to give me some crap about choosing a side?”
“Oh, hell no. Well, not about choosing a side. Am a bit jealous those two have gotten to go for a ride, and I haven’t though. But I know you know what it is like out there, in real life. Those ideas of one woman and one man settling down and raising kids died pretty hard with the Plague. I don’t know how it has hit guys like you, but us girls had to come to terms with the idea of either sharing a guy, or going to a sperm bank.”
I’ll admit that I hadn’t thought about things from the other side of the fence. I’d always been more concerned with my own situation, after all, and that was before the accident. Seeing that I was about to go down a rabbit hole of thought, Sexkitten chuckled, and grabbed my hand, distracting me, as she led the way to the bar. “You know, you play your cards right, and you might get the whole team as your devoted harem of sex slaves, just like you did with Berzerker.”
I grinned at her. “Well, don’t know about that. Berzerker was just the kind of girl who naturally fell into that role. Probably went quicker than things would have in real life, since we don’t have the same scale of consequences here, but that’s the kind of thing she needed. Not sure about you or the others, yet. Of course, maybe I’ll make you my pet housecat, instead.”
“Mmmh. Promises, promises,” Sexkitten said breathily, before turning her attention to the virtual bar and the werewolf in a speedo who was mixing drinks. When the werewolf looked her way, she said, “Two whiskeys, on the rocks, and a Wicked Sister in a Bush.”
The werewolf nodded once, and two drinks appeared in front of us, along with a card with a table number. Sexkitten picked up her drink, and the card, and turned away from the bar. Grabbing my own drink, I followed after her as we made our way to Booth 23, which was what was on the card.
Sliding into the booth next to her, I grinned. “I’m guessing that the Wicked Sister is the phrase to signal you’re here for a meet?”
“Yeah, at least that’s what my contact said,” Sexkitten nodded.
A moment later, an ork guy with four octopus tentacles sprouting from his back walked up to the table. He was wearing the colors and symbols of the Reality Hackers, and he immediately sat down across from us, which meant he was likely who we were here to meet. He nodded once, and said, “All right, you two are new. We ain’t done business before, which means we don’t trust you much. So, here is how it works. You tell us about the job you want done, and we decide whether it is worth our time. Leave some big info out, and we’re gonna have problems later, got it?”
“Chill, man. We’re not looking to burn bridges we ain’t even built yet.” My words looked like they put the ganger at ease, so I said, “Name’s Iceblade, and this is Sexkitten. We’ve got some work upcoming, and need to arrange a distraction for a spider so that they don’t know what’s hitting them until it is too late.”
The virtual ganger nodded, and said, “Call me Slitsplitter. Now, a distraction can be right up our alley, but I’ll be needing more before I can set the boys on it.”
“Know the Creative Horizons facility down by Silver Lake?”
“Yeah, seen it in the ‘trix once or twice. What of it?”
“Don’t need to tell you that they got an inner and outer network. Need to get a person in place, physically, to get access to the inner network. That means we need someone to keep pesky spiders occupied and not looking at cameras or calling for help while we do it.”
“You’re starting to catch my interest, but what we talking about for payment? Boys don’t wreck code for free, you know.”
“Two thousand for an easy night’s work. Nothing fancy required, just go into their outer network, wreck anything you can find, steal anything that isn’t bolted down, smack a spider around if you find one. You get the 2k upfront, and whatever paydata you grab off the network is yours. Only rule is no black ice attacks.”
“Going soft on the corpies?”
“Nah, but corporations don’t go looking to make examples of Shadowmen as much when they don’t have corpsec bodies piled up, and all those death benefits that they gotta pay out. That starts making things personal, y’know? So, we do this without catching bodies, and it is easy credits.”
The virtual ganger considered for a moment, and then nodded. “Gimme the creds, and I’ll get the boys lined up. When you want this distraction to go down?
I flicked a credit transfer his way. “Two nights from now, 20:00. We’ll be staging the team to go in at that time, so that’s when we need the distraction.”
Slitsplitter nodded as he accepted the transfer. “You’ll get your distraction, all right. Don’t expect there to be much of their outer network when we’re done, though. Guys I’m bringing on to do this don’t have a subtle bone in their bodies, but they wreck shit good.”
“That’s just fine. Amazing how many goodies can get ‘lost in the fire’, even when it is a virtual one, right?”
“Heh, I like the way you think, Iceblade. Here’s the commcode to use when it is time to party. We’ll be waiting, two nights from now.”
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