Corpo Age

Chapter 97: Argus

Yuki - Halls Corporation

Yuki woke up to the sound of her alarm that was blaring from the other side of her room. She had the option to simply use the alarm function on her SAID, but sometimes she was so tired she would simply set it on snooze and fall back asleep. That’s why she had placed her terminal across the room, to force herself to get out of bed.

She drowsily brushed her teeth and prepared for a new day at work. While she was showering, she glanced at the reflection of her torso through the mirror and inspected it for any scars from the installation yesterday. She thoroughly went through it and once she was satisfied seeing nothing there, she finally went to get dressed.

Luckily for her, her workplace was just a few steps away from where she lived in the company dorm. Although it wasn’t as convenient inviting friends and family over, she had never heard of any other corporation not charging any rent at all.

The pay was competitive too, enough for her corpo parents to stop complaining, which was a huge relief to Yuki, as she was under a lot of pressure from them when she had done poorly academically. She wasn’t sure how her life would’ve been when she was denied any opportunities outside of security jobs due to her poor showing in school, but she was happy she finally found her footing in life.

After breakfast, she walked over to the main building of her company and went to report to the security department in the basement. She equipped her company-provided combat armor in the locker room and made sure there weren’t any creases on the company’s emblem of a snow owl before she got her day started.

Once she was ready, she went over to the office of her current superior, Peter, who oversaw all security personnel within the base. Yuki had been promoted recently to lead one of the elite teams, but she still had to report to her commanding officer every morning.

“Good morning, Peter. Is my assignment unchanged from what you told me yesterday?”

“Morning. That’s right. The CEO will fill you in himself later. Don’t worry about any of your other duties for today.”

“I see. Can I—”

The door to the office suddenly opened, cutting Yuki off. They both turned to find a heavily augmented man, while large, was slightly on the small side for cyborgs.

“Thorne.” Yuki nodded toward him with a smile.

Peter had stood up to salute, and called out respectfully at the same time, “Chief security officer, sir.”

He glared at Yuki for the casual demeanor she was showing.

“It’s fine. I told you all to just call me by name.”

Yuki grinned back at her superior, as if having won before speaking, “I won’t bother you guys, then. I’ll come back later.”

As she was about to walk past her commanding officer’s superior, a hand was placed on her shoulder, stopping her in place just at the door. “It’s fine. You can stay. I’ll be quick.”

Yuki blinked and stepped to the side to give the men some space to chat. She had been taught from a young age to keep her head down and try not to stick her head where it didn’t belong, so she didn’t want to overhear any of their conversation. But she was also taught to listen to her superior’s command.

She watched as Thorne opened his mouth to speak with Peter, but for some reason, no sound reached her at all. When she concentrated on their mouths, a black box appeared in her optics and covered the lips as well.

Oh, that new company software update.

She remembered briefly hearing about that when she went to the cyber-doc yesterday. Yuki swiftly got over it, as it was a given that corporations had a tight leash on their employees. In fact, she was glad the new measures were implemented. Now she couldn’t even be a suspect for any leaks simply because she was in the vicinity, which was a nerve-wracking experience in itself.

True to his words, Thorne only spoke briefly with Peter and soon left.

“Now, where were we? Right, you should report to the CEO now after getting changed. Wear something a typical mercenary would. You can find it from the intel department’s disguises if you don’t have any.”

“Okay, I’ll go right away, then.”

Once Yuki got changed as requested, she headed straight for the fourth floor where the executives lived and went toward the infamous workshop. Everyone knew this was where the CEO was usually holed up in, so it was the first place she checked.

She pressed the button to alert the inhabitants of her presence, and contrary to what she heard, she received an immediate reply. The doors unlocked and she walked into a messy room where various tools and parts were sprawled around the various workbenches. Beside one of the workbenches, she spotted her CEO waving toward her while sipping on his drink.

“Good morning, Yuki. How are you feeling after the installation yesterday?”

“I’m fine, sir. What kind of tests would you like me to do today?”

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“They briefed you on the new implant before installing it, right?”

“Yes, sir. I haven’t tested it as they strictly told me to await your orders, but it should be an infantry class sensor, correct?”

Her boss walked over to one of the nearby workbenches to fish out a device the size of a small cup and held it out to her.

“This is the prototype model for my Argus project. I’m sending you the file on how to use it and how it works now. Try to familiarize yourself with it as best you can. You’ll be using it in live combat later today.”

“Umm, I’m sorry? We’re expecting live combat?”

“Yes, I’ve signed us up for a gig from a QG. Don’t worry, I’ll be tagging along, though mostly as a spectator.”

“...You’ll be tagging along?”

How is that something for me not to be worried about? If anything happens to you, they’ll lay the responsibility for it with me!

“Yes…And a small team that’ll stay a distance away from us, so it doesn’t distract you.”

So there is another team on bodyguard duty. Lead with that, please!

Yuki spent her entire lunch focused on going through the file about the new implant. She normally would’ve dreaded being selected as a guinea pig for a corporation, but she trusted her current employer enough to enthusiastically agree when she found out they were looking for testers. The bonus pay was also convincing, but she believed their claim that it was tested and perfectly safe for her.

After eating, she soon found herself in an unmarked car being driven by her big boss. They drove into District 12, on the outskirts of the city, where various gangs had a larger presence. Yuki could soon see from the pedestrians around that this part of the city was a lot more dangerous than the rest.

Those corporate overlords who control the city are too lazy to even bother with cleaning up the filth, huh? Or does their existence provide them with some sort of benefit?

“Today’s gig is to rescue some corpo’s son who has been kidnapped.”

“What, they can’t do it with their corp?” As soon as the words left her mouth, Yuki realized her faux pas.

How could I speak to the CEO so rudely?!

Her boss simply smiled and answered her question.

“A lot of corporations don’t care that much about their low-level employees. Or sometimes, they simply don’t want to report the kidnapping as it can be a black mark in their career, so they take matters into their own hands and hire mercenaries.”

“I see…Thank you for explaining to someone like me.”

“Ha, I didn’t learn about this until recently. Don’t worry, ask anything you would like. Like I said before, you’ll be taking care of this job today.”

After asking some questions meekly. They found a parking lot to stash their car in and walked down one of the side streets toward the target building.

Yuki was thankful that the cy-sec specialists had already done the majority of the work, tracking down the location of where the kidnappers were from their communications to the parents. It didn’t take long for Yuki to locate one of the apartment complexes that people had repurposed from an old warehouse.

She quickly turned on the active camouflage ability on her Shade and climbed onto the second-floor balcony where the door was opened. She was thankful to whoever left it open, even if they were probably drug addicts, judging from the drugs and smoking instruments out on the balcony.

Once she was inside, she quickly activated her new implant, the Argus.

What settings should I enter again? Biological will just give me too many to work within a residence. Right, set it to scan for the specific SAID model that the rescue target has.

The implant scanned her surroundings, and the results were displayed in the corner of her vision, like a minimap in a game.

There was just one result within the entire area, just one person with the Zenitech Picca Mk.4 within several hundred meters. It was located on the fifth floor of this building.

With that new information, Yuki quickly got to work. She climbed the stairs and passed through the building’s non-existent security with her active camouflage and arrived on a floor that was filled with graffiti and hallway lights that barely worked as they intermittently flickered.

She walked toward unit #512 where the sensor had picked up on her target and paused outside so she could scan once more, but this time, with the settings set for all biological targets around the target area.

She was rewarded with a few pings that showed up in her minimap and found eight targets in the direction of the unit. Some of them may be from neighboring units, so she proceeded with that in mind.

The doors were locked tight, but as she’d learned from all the experience she had working with active camouflage, she knew that people usually opened their doors when knocked. Even when they could see no one was there in the peephole, they would still open to investigate.

And she did just that.

The door soon opened, and a man with a face full of tattoos answered. Yuki swiftly slipped into the unit as soon as the door opened and found a living room that was more like an armory, with all the guns lying around.

She found several other men with similar tattoos on their faces, sitting by the couch, watching a large screen terminal together. What they were watching, though, was horrifying to say the least.

Yuki almost gasped at the brutal nature of the video being played, which appeared to be a homemade recording. She quickly refocused her mind on the mission instead, which was to rescue the boy who would likely meet a similar fate as the victims on the video if left to his own device.

She went through the various rooms in the apartment and found a boy tied up in one of the rooms. Glancing at the unconscious boy, she verified it was the same one in the dossier she was given. Even the background of the picture she had received matched the room she was in as well.

With her rescue target confirmed, she headed outside to finish off the kidnappers first, so she could safely extract the boy.

What she found the moment she went back outside was entirely different from what she expected. Instead of finding the men merrily watching their ghastly videos, she stumbled upon a scene filled with blood and corpses inside the apartment. The men she had passed by earlier were dead, each with various holes in their bodies where their blood leaked out.

It had all happened so suddenly, and without a sound as well. She would’ve been more surprised if she wasn’t so mindful of who was hanging around her the entire trip.

She found the person she expected, her boss, leaning by the apartment’s entrance in his combat suit.

“Sir, I thought you weren’t going to intervene.”

“Sorry about that. I couldn’t resist. The entire point of the test was to see how you used the Argus, anyway. Combat wasn’t a consideration.”

“...”

“Anyway, you got the kid, right? Let’s head out.”

“...Yes, sir.”

As expected. My boss is someone to be trusted. His sense of justice must’ve urged him to act after seeing the horrific shit they were watching.