Outrun – Cyberpunk LitRPG Chapter 287

Surprisingly, Saint was able to sweep the entire server room without anyone stopping him. They even encouraged him, actually. Thirty minutes in, the door popped open. I thought it was over. A strike squad was finally summoned to co flatline the reporter digging into their servers.

Instead, a man walked in carrying a pot of coffee. “Want so?”

”Coffee? Oh! Sure.” Saint casually closed all the files he had pulled up. “Drink with ?”

“I wish… unfortunately, I’m in a bit of a ti crunch. I’d love to stop and chat.” The man shook his head in disappointnt and headed out the door. Saint watched him go, idly sipping at the steaming cup. Not only was he getting away with it, he was even getting service? It made rethink all of my strategies up to this point. Did I go down the wrong path?

”You still with , Shiro?” The handso reporter nodded to one of my Dragonflies. It buzzed over to him, giving a perfect view of just how relaxed he was about the whole situation.

“Chek. Wouldn’t go anywhere else.” Not when they might discover you weren't actually part of the audit team at any mont.

”Take a nap. I know you need it.” Saint shrugged and went back to looking through Visceral’s finances.

I shook my head and look up at the cloudy skin. “When this is over. I can’t just-“

”You dying from exhaustion won’t help her.” Saint sighed. He picked up the Dragonfly and looked into its caras. “What are you going to do when we find the lab, anyway?”

”Go in and get her out.” That was the only option. I couldn’t trust anyone else to not fuck it up. The Crusade and FSA military were options, but there was no telling if they could get to Mira in ti. I couldn’t risk it.

”How are you going to get her out of a heavily guarded location? Chances are she won’t be in the best of states.” He scratched at his head. “Just being pragmatic.”

“I- I know that, okay?” Of course I knew that. I had a plan though. If I could get to where they held her, I could use the Transporter to get her into the Aether. Then I could just leave with Spectral Flock and pull her out of the Aether sowhere else.

Saint sighed and dropped the Dragonfly. It buzzed back to his shoulder. “Tell about her.”

”Mira?” Why? What was his goal? I felt a spike of paranoia race through . I took a calming breath. Now definitely wasn’t the ti for this. Sleep deprivation was starting to get to .

”Just- we’re working so hard to find her, yes? Tell a bit about her. You showed a picture, but what’s she like?” He spoke in smooth, calming tones.

”She’s- heh- she’s a goofball? One of the most excited people I know. And fiercely protective.” My mind traced back to mories throughout the years. “She’s like a puppy.”

Saint nodded his head and went back to surfing through the docunts on Visceral’s server banks. “She sounds like a wonderful person.”

”The best.” So she definitely didn’t deserve whatever was happening to her. My heart throbbed painfully in my chest. I squeezed my eyes shut. Maybe once I got her out, I could give her the interface? Nothing like this would ever happen again… or if I could even just give her one Trait or Perk. Was there anything like that, useless voyeurs-?

Sorry… sorry. I don’t know why I’m taking my anger out on you guys. You’ve already helped so much, and I- ugh, I’m so useless… Not like you guys are omniscient and know exactly where she is-

“You said she was a crackshot, right?” Saint asked, drawing my mind away before I could start spiraling.

”Insane. Could probably put a bullet through a cricket’s leg without killing the cricket. That’s without much chro.” As far as I knew, she only had a Neural System Interface and Cyber Audio Suite.

Saint chuckled warmly. “Sounds like she’s quite the gun nut.”

”’Course. She loves guns. Hah- she always ca to to show off one thing or another at a firing range-“ Wait, was that why she headed into that alley? To get a gun? Gunrunning was on the uptick throughout the city, so it wouldn’t be all that surprising if she had so kind of deal-

“Stay with , Shiro.” Saint called, drawing from my racing thoughts. “Almost done here.”

”Chek.” I rubbed a hand down my face. Why was just sitting here more exhausting than breaking into Raijin? Or even attacking a Scav den, for that matter. I summoned the canteen and drank a bunch more energy drink. Good thing I didn’t have to worry about heart problems. Quick Healing should be able to take care of all of that.

“Tell so stories?” He asked. “I want to get to know her. I have a feeling we’ll be seeing each other a lot in the future.”

He was probably just saying that to cheer up. Seeing each other a lot? I doubt it. Not like I ran with a crew. I was a lone-wolf through and through… although the past several days have been making rethink that slightly. I definitely wouldn’t have gotten as far as I had without Saint’s help. So far, he’d been a core part of every major discovery.

I thought back to all the tis I’d spent with Mira. I closed my eyes and shook out my bouncing leg. Electricity sparked off of , grounding into the building’s roof. “You know I said she was fiercely protective, right?”

“Yeah.” Saint hadn’t stopped working even once. He really was pretty good at this. I should’ve given him more credit when I first t him.

My heart throbbed as the mory played out in my head once more. Or maybe that was all the caffeine starting to get to ? Could Quick Healing heal an exploded heart? “Well- there was this one ti when we were kids. My parents were still alive back then.”

“Go on.” He lightly prodded when I stopped, getting lost in thought.

”Chek- we- I was young and dumb back then. I was a corpo kid. My parents brought up well, but… I had that corpo pride back then. Thought I was invincible. Wandered where I shouldn’t have.” It was so long ago. I rarely even thought back to those days. Sha and sorrow intertwined with each mory. “There was a baby Screet hiding in an alley. Had a broken wing.”

”Screet…” He paused and looked away from the screen for the first ti in a while. He rubbed at his chin, eyes drifting in thought. “The massive hawks? The one with the hypersonic scream?”

“Chek. That’s the one.” Those ugly bastards. It’d been a while since I’d seen one around. Hopefully they were extinct. Then again, North Arkhanika wasn’t a great continent for birds with the Eternal Sandstorm. They were probably still around across the pond.

“Nasty birds.” Saint shook his head. “Heard they like to attack anything smaller than them.”

I replayed the events in my mind. Usually, I kept them buried. They were let out to freely roam this ti though. “They definitely do. My parents- well, let’s just say I was sheltered. I saw the injured creature and wanted to help it.”

”Thats a very noble-“

”I think you an foolish.” I cut him off. I didn’t want to continue with the rest of the story. It was buried so deep in sha and self-loathing. Even just bringing it up was making feel off. “I startled the bird. It got aggressive and tried to attack . Mira had followed when I wandered off. She ca in like a superhero, slamming the thing upside the head with a rotting two by four.”

”At least it didn’t get its scream off.” Saint, adorable Saint, tried to find the bright side. There wasn’t one in this story. There wasn’t one in most stories. That’s just the way to world worked.

”Oh, but it did, Saint. It did…” I pinned my arms to my stomach, staring at the ground. With a blink, the caras faded from my HUD. I couldn’t bear to look at his face. My voice wavered when I started speaking again. “She- she saved from getting mauled. You know what they say though. No good deed… t-took the scream point blank. Completely trashed her ears.”

”Damn…”

”Y-yeah…” I took a mont to get my voice back under control. Crazy- I hadn’t thought about this in so long. Been pushing it down, and now here it was strangling my voice with emotion. “S-so she’s had a revolving door of Cyber Audio Suites since we were kids.”

Saint sighed heavily. The sounds of typing stopped and we sat there, completely silent, for several long monts. “Remind to shoot any Screets I see in the future.”

Yeah… yeah, I felt the sa way. They were vicious birds better off extinct. A mutation of geese, I think. “That night was the first night I’d ever seen Uncle Ezra so mad. He was just a trooper back then. Got permission from HICOM and took a couple squads to wipe out an entire flock of the bastards. That was one of his first promotions.”

“Your Uncle Ezra- he’s in the FSA’s military, right?” Saint went back to working on finding Yellow Inc’s lab.

“Chek. Way high up now. After that, he was careful to always keep Mira with him. And then this ti…“ I couldn’t even imagine what he was going through. I’d sent him another update not too long ago, but the Eternal Sandstorm must be interfering again. I hadn't heard from him since. Being trapped so far away while his daughter went through potentially unspeakable torture…

I coughed lightly, wanting to shift the subject. “How close are we?”

“I think-“ The reporter abruptly cut himself off. “Soone’s coming.”

“Shit.” I snapped the HUD back up into my vision, hiding the my dragonflies just in ti for a man to enter the server room. Looked like IT? He had a vest covered in tools thrown over a button-up shirt.

The man paused, staring at Saint in surprise. “Sorry, I wasn't expecting anyone else to be in here.”

”All good, my man.” The reporter easily slid into a smile as if he wasn’t bothered by the interruption. “You doing maintenance? Need to move?”

”You’re good. I shouldn’t affect you at all.” The IT guy moved to one of the servers on the back side of the room. “This damn thing keeps disconnecting.”

”Why haven’t we bought a new one?” Saint casually asked.

The man threw his hand up in the air as if to say ‘exactly’. “Big wigs and their budget cuts on the weirdest little things.”

The reporter went back to work looking through the files. I flew a Dragonfly away from the IT technician, hiding it in a better spot. ”I’ll talk to them when I head back. See if I can’t figure sothing out.”

“Would you really?” The man smiled brightly. “Been trying for months to get at least sothing done about it.”

”No problem.” Saint slid through the finances for ten minutes in silence. Eventually the IT guy fixed whatever issue was with the servers and left.

I discharge another bout of electricity generate by my bouncing leg. “This stress is killing .”

”How do you think I feel?” He grabbed one of the Dragonflies and set it up in front of his screen. “Check this out. I think I got sothing.”

The numbers made my head spin. I summoned the canteen and drank so more caffeine. It helped relieve so of the symptoms. “What am I looking at?”

”These numbers match our receipts from Red Veil. Visceral paid for a delivery of bulk goods. Must’ve been quite the delivery too considering how high the price is.” He flicked to a couple different tabs. “Only- they don’t have logs of receiving a bulk delivery. It’s a classic attempt to hide the money trail.”

”So we track back the delivery company?” I opened a new tab on my Net browser and looked up ‘Aetheon Shipping’. “Small corporation. They have a small fleet of trucks that run between Aythryn City and Sunderland.”

Saint set the docunts he found to download onto a chip. Then he pulled out his phone and started working on it. “Looks like it might be a shell. They have a warehouse in Portside though.”

I shifted on my Hoverbike, itching to pull off and head for it. ”I bet our Savant Lab is under there.”

”Maybe…” Saint plucked is chip with all of Visceral’s data on it out of the server bank. “Sothing is off about this place too… you were asleep when I walked in, but they don’t have all that many employees.”

“Maybe they’re just understaffed?”

”Maybe… You’d think a cybernetic R&D corporation would have so engineers on staff, right?” Saint shifted tabs on the terminal connected to the server banks. “Check this out. Almost everyone here is just a pencil pusher.”

”Think Visceral Cybernetics is a shell too, then?” It’d explain how Red Veil figured out they were behind the Savant Lab. Visceral might just be the scapegoat for whatever corporation was funding this whole thing.

“Definetely. A well-hidden one, but no way they’re funding a Savant Lab all by themselves.” Saint shut everything off and stood up. “Not to ntion no one here knew who the real auditor was. I doubt anyone in this building even knows whats going on.”

I tapped my chin, carefully sifting through my thoughts. ”Still have that nuke?”

”Right here.” He hefted the bag of Raijin trackers. Thankfully, it was still unopened.

”Don’t use it. Think you can figure out who’s behind all of this while I break into the Savant Lab?” No way was I going to just let them walk. There was going to be a blood toll, one way or another. If that ant I had to make a sniper and post up on a water tower, that was exactly what I’d do.

”With a couple days, no problem.” Saint paused at the door, allowing my Dragonflies to hide on him once more. “Promise you’ll take at least a small nap before going? Attacking while too exhausted to think will only endanger both of you.”

Ugh- back to this stupid conversation. As much as I hated to admit it, he had a good point. Going into a Savant Lab was different than anything I’d done before. Hell, the last ti I just blew it up without even checking the place. “Find, I’ll take another nap. Don’t do anything sneaky this ti.”

“I won’t. Scout’s honor.” He did seem like the kid of guy to be a scout. Saint headed for the door of the server room. “I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

”I’ll be waiting.” Even if every second that ticked by felt like it was burning a hole in my heart.