Written in 365 Parts: 72: Poisoned Fruit

“Drick” the Comms unit buzzed and Drick pulled some focus to the internal screens that were hovering at the bottom of the retinal implant. They had time to answer as Marsh would still be in surgery for another ninety minutes and Boomer hadn’t returned from running errands.

“Rodero,” Drick brought the Comm’s channel with the connection to Rodero to the front of the stack, “what’s the situation.”

Rodero appeared. Again they were in the mixture of black and charcoal leather coat, thigh high boots and black denim pants, though the tee had a different underground synth band with an obscure literature quote. “We’re rolling.”

Drick allowed an avatar of them to appear so that Rodero had a figure to use for reference. Drick raised a hologramatic eyebrow, “Fill me in.”

“It’s a double whammy to be honest.” Rodero seemed smug, “I was lurking in the low level system calls of the security service servers, and saw that someone had started a wipe of all the words we had targeted. I was able to backtrace a lot of connections and make duplicates. Some of it got garbled, but I have a recovery programme working on it right now.”

“That’s good news. Looks like the override we were able to put in has worked. I guess they have killed all the possible codes that the Security Guard gave us?”

“Pretty much, except I was able to cut a few extra low level codes before they did that which might come in useful. Mostly just second codes on doors and lockers, but not to anywhere super sensitive.”

“Any advantage is a path towards our goals. What’s the other whammy?” Drick let the avatar stand up and move towards Rodero as the Comm’s connection opened up to have them walking along a pathway in a garden overgrown with thorny vines. Drick looked around and shrugged expressively and gave Rodero a weak smile.

“They just hired me.” Rodero had a grin that went from ear to ear but not literally.

“What?” Drick stopped the gentle stroll and stared at Rodero to see if this was a joke. It didn’t seem so.

“Yeah, I know. Balls of amazement, right? It is through one of my surface clone networks. An old one at that. It is still secure and safe which is why I never released it back into the ether. They want a cleanup doing and a deep level trace on anything that Judiciary have on the incident at the nightclub. In fact anything anyone has on the nightclub. It is good money but they need the work to be done quickly. What do you want me to do?”

Drick pursed lips and then let a smile creep over them, “I want you to do what they are paying you to do. But let’s face it, you are going to be able to give them so much more than that.”

“I am, but I don’t think I should.”

“Maybe, maybe not. Actually I have the seed of a plan in my mind. We are going to pick up a lot of heat, I mean a lot of interest when we pull the job. So maybe it might be wise to whittle their forces down a little more than originally we were able. I mean I was just going to use the gangs and the Union help, that would take out some of the resistance. But, how about making them purposefully give up valuable resources and time. Not only that it might draw them out a little, push for even more mistakes. I think it is time we started to lay some breadcrumbs down leading to Grandma’s House for the poisoned fruit.”

“What?”

“I thought you liked fairy tales and stories, Rodero, do your research. I may be mixing them all up a little.”

“Well I shall let them know that I am on the case. I still think this whole plan as a high chance of going very badly wrong.”

“That’s what you said about the club.”

“I was almost right.”

“Aside from things going as I sort of expected them.”

“You may have expected them but did everyone else expect them?” Rodero stared at Drick, “thought not. You should learn to share a little, Drick.”

“I am sharing. Just not with you. Get to work and let me know when you have established a nice trail and a line to a high enough source. Don’t make it too juicy too quickly. Be cautious but a little loquacious.”

“Wow, pulling out all the big words again. That old unit in your head needs a more modern dictionary. Something from the last millenia should bounce you forward a thousand years or so.” The garden and the vines started to collapse as Rodero pulled the construct program from the comm channel.

“Nice insult, not. Now go or I will start playing rough.”

“This is you playing smooth.” Rodero was fading from view.

“This is me being as gentle as a mother bird kicking a cuckoo out of her nest. Go.” Drick killed the connection to standby.