This story has: cyberpunk worldbuilding, mind control, stepfordization, and trans orc girls. Hope y'all like these things as much as I do!
Anyways, enjoy the completed fic! Hope you dig it.
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"I'm beginning to think that we might have gotten in a bit over our head," Morsel whispered as the third Blackstar Security operator in as many minutes swept a gun past her hiding spot.
"This is your operation!" Vixen replied, stabbing a finger into the Goblin woman's digiplate vest. It was talking all the self control that the Orc had earned in a lifetime of 'running to keep from losing her cool. "You said it would be a tutorial level!"
The two were face to face out of necessity. Morsel's stealth field clung to her diminutive body and could only be extended by a few feet, so the pair had spent an awkward, frustrating amount of time staring at each other in very close confines. It might have been romantic had the circumstances been different, but a high risk tryst was just about the last thing on Vixen's mind. If she was going to do anything to the Goblin decker, it would be toss her from the nearest window.
"No risk, no reward," she rattled off. "Sure we might have tripped a few dozen more alarms than I had expected, but I don't see what you're complaining about. We got the package."
Vixen rolled her eyes. "That's not the point! Any boot can steal something. Getting away with it without getting your ID burned is what professionals do. Something we," she pointed back and forth between the pair of them, "Should be doing."
The footfalls grew louder, and Vixen fell silent. With it being the only audible noise, each slam of heavy boot on the cracked linoleum floor sounded like the death knell for them both. A casual eye would see them for what they wanted to be seen as: hard customers in red and gunmetal armour, the five-pointed star of their namesake emblazoned on their shoulders and chests, places where the plates were thickest. If you'd served, like Vixen had, you could see them for what they were: rentacops.
Rentacops with a ludicrous budget for firearms, however.
Hushed voices, followed by more footsteps. With a sense of visceral relief for the pair, the steps were heading away from them. The Blackstar boys had found a lead, or another one of Morsel's decoys, and were out of their hair. At least for the moment.
Vixen took the opportunity to stand up and stretch. At 6'3, she was almost double the height of her Goblin companion. Crouching down behind the service counter to be within her stealth field left her back and knees sore. She was pushing 100 after all, though she didn't look a day over 25 in human terms. Perhaps she was getting too old for this stuff.
"Okay," Morsel began, "So I know that there've been some hiccups along the way. But-"
The glare Vixen shot her could melt tungsten. "The moment we fence this thing, we are never working again. I can't believe I went in for this in the first place. You are the worst thief I've ever worked with."
Morsel frowned, actually looking hurt by the statement. "Alright, alright, I get it. But, keep in mind, we stole this." She pushed at a little button at the nape of her neck, and withdrew a slim wafer from her internal rig. It gleamed with a chromey-blue colour, the fractal veins of quantum circuitry pulsing with stored battery energy. "You know how much this'll go for? Chameleon Chips are rarer than diamonds! Once you load this in, any hacker worth their motherboard can blend seamlessly into any system. Corpo, mil, doesn't matter. ICE can't touch you, and other hackers'll slide by like you're a basic batch file. It's the find of a century!"
"And now we have to keep it. Won't matter how much it's worth if we get ventilated before we can fence it. C'mon." Vixen led the way out of the ruined storefront and back onto the street. It was almost always dusk in the Dayshen, the ground level slums far from the sunlight globes one got to see if you lived on the high rises closer to the skybox. Neon signs and flickering street lamps burned in perpetuity, some dating back to when Unity had been a nice city. A prosperous town built out of the hopes and dreams of two congloms finally working together instead of blowing up each other's tunnels. Not a rat's nest it was now
Beneath the wealthy olegs, beneath the civil servants, beneath even the wage slaves, the dregs of newmanity lived, worked, and tried to stay alive. Being down here reminded Vixen that she hadn't risen that far at all. Hopefully, this score would be a part of her ticket up. Maybe high enough so that she didn't have to smell the garbage.
They took the less traveled alleys, the ones you'd half expect to see chalk outlines of bodies like a pre-Sunfall detective story. More than once they had to cower in among the detritus or against a doorway to let a searching drone pass by, its spotlights stabbing into the near pitch dark like a hunter's spear. Once in a while they'd slide up against a shambler or some poor homeless fucker. Like the eye of a jealous god, the light would lock on while its origin point ran through a battery of sensory tests. Then, inevitably, it would move on, its subject spared a shot from a taser baton round or a blast of flechettes.
They rounded a corner, coming back onto one of the major thoroughfares in this part of town: Garnet Street. The place to come if you wanted to blow a week's wage in a night. Bars, chiplines, portholes, holosuites, grindhouses, even honest to goodness brothels lined the road. Some joker had actually set the lights in this part of town to a dim reddish hue. Importantly, there was plenty of foot traffic. Between the drunken patrons stumbling between establishments and the sex workers on e-cig breaks, they shouldn't have a problem getting lost. The only problem was-
"Looks like we gotta ditch the equipment," Morsel whispered.
Vixen wanted to argue, but the little Goblin had a point. There were people wearing all kinds of outfits on display, but none were exactly equipped for combat. With their tac gear, they stuck out like a sore thumb. To blend in, they'd need something a little less threatening and a lot less tasteful. She snapped her fingers, pointing across the street to a storefront with a flickering overhang. The embossed words read "Nocturnal Technicians", while a neon outline of a scantily clad bot let them both know just what kind of operation it was.
"We go in there. Grindhouses have all kinds of outfits for their bots, right? Bound to be something at least mildly inoffensive."
Morsel snorted. "Yeah, like a secretary! Or a maid, a teacher, a clumsy nurse..."
"Not a fan of it either. At the very least, it gets us off the street."
Getting in was easy enough. There was a troll at the front door with his head buried in a tabscreen who gave them a cocked eye. A few creds his way and he let them through with a weary "stay out of trouble or I'll haul your asses out myself." They both nodded and hustled on through the entrance, barely missing an inquisitive drone's searchlight.
The inside looked like the lobby of a dingy 2D theatre if you squinted. At the back was a bored looking Elf teller at a sales desk. The screens above her head displayed a rotating assortment of images pulled from some purely fantasies. Cheerleaders, superheroes, wealthy businesspeople, anyone you'd ever want to plow or get plowed by, it was all on offer. Either side of the lobby led to wings of doors with coded locks, each nondescript. The only indication as to just what lay behind each was a ticker screen above the door. Some were pretty obvious, others frustratingly vague. "Pleasure Palace" was pretty descriptive, but just what the hell was "Best Day Ever?"
As Morsel checked for the least offensive option, Vixen's ears caught a voice.
"Hey, buddy," the bouncer at the front said, "We don't do combat shit. You want bloodsports, the Colosseum is down the road."
A snide, nasally voice replied. "We're not here for recreation. We're looking for two women-"
Vixen grabbed her Goblin companion and yanked her down the hallway to the right. She was practically carrying the short woman, much to her chagrin.
"Hey! You know I hate being carried!"
"Sorry, no time. New plan: hiding! Can you get one of these doors open?"
Morsel wiggled out of her grasp. "Only if you set me down first!"
