I nodded to her and gathered my unholstered my pistol, handing it to her handle first, "We both know you can handle yourself without this, but for my peace of mind, take it," I told her. She did as I asked, and I bent down to pick up my damaged cyberdeck.
"There'll be more coming," I said as I inspected 'deck, the device that allowed me to jack into the Matrix and explore cyberspace in full VR. It was still usable. I cracked it open and began to make some quick fixes, sort of a mechanical first-aid, so I could try again.
"Is it slagged?" Drex asked me as she scanned the points of entry into the small office, her eyes focused down the sights of my pistol.
I shook my head and grinned at her, my Troll tusks protruding garishly, "Never," I said, and pulled the connecting cable free from it's sheath on the side of the 'deck, "Now keep your eyes open. I'm going back."
She nodded, and I plugged the cable into the datajack slot on the side of my head, firmly connecting my brain via a network of cybernetic cables to the computer in my lap, and began typing the commands to jack myself into full VR.
My vision faded away, abruptly replaced with streams of code as I adjusted my perceptions to virtual reality. It didn't take long before the visual representation flooded in, replacing code with a network of faintly glowing filing cabinets in an office building similar in shape to the one I was in back in meatspace, only far, far larger. This building was more akin to a massive warehouse filled with cabinets than a small records room. I gasped at the size of it, and shook my digital head. Now was not the time for wonder.
Quickly I assembled my persona, my online representation, and made sure I had everything that I'd need. Autosoft weaponry, maybe a few drone programs for backup, and now I was prepared for the inevitable intrusion countermeasures.
This was the fun part. In reality, decking is just hacking on steroids; sorting through lines of code and moving things around to make things more accessible, exploiting weaknesses in firewalls and the like. Seen through the lenses of VR, however, it's much more impressive as visual representations based on both the decker's and the target's imaginations are displayed, and since my mind was jacked directly to the computer system I was able to perform operations at the speed of thought rather than the speed of my typing fingers or clicking mouse.
I activated some of my autosoft programs, represented visually by a suit of Corp-issue body armor and a massive automatic weapon. I grinned, and my persona grinned in turn, and I began to stalk through the halls of the cyber-complex to find the data we'd been hired to find.
Last time it had seemed like a piece of cake, and so it followed this time. As before, I wandered the virtual warehouse looking at file numbers and names until I came upon the one I was looking for, displayed on one of the warehouse shelves seemingly 50 feet or so in front of me. I knew now, though, that as I entered this hallway and got closer to the file in question, I would be set upon by incredibly dangerous black intrusion countermeasures. I was prepared.
Right on schedule, it arrived, materializing in front of me, coming into focus as a giant, four-armed minotaur. It towered above me, almost too tall to be real which, of course, it wasn't. I leveled my assault rifle at the big bastard and grinned.
TO BE CONCLUDED IN PART 5
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