Chrome Symphony - Chapter 1

"I really don't get it, either," Elise said after listening to the three stories. "Some Johnson gets you guys here, and then tries to pull the screw job at the initial meet? It's goddamn amateur hour, if they didn't even get you into one of their own facilities first." She sighed. "Christ, they'd do better just offering runners an upgrade or two up front and sneaking the lock-out chips in while they were under, or getting you guys to one of their offices for the meeting. Doesn't make any sense, unless this was some idiot working on their own to try and score a better quarterly review."

She ran over what they knew. "So, other than all that, let's see. I can tell you that we don't generally contact the corps for services. The bar's got its own channels and we like to keep it that way. Haven't seen any network problems, either. So, you probably got lied to because there's no way in hell EMA would send one of their own right to a competitor."

"The bigger question...is why the hell is Crest messing with illegal control chips? Think they were looking to poach some new talent for their own network security divisions?" She paused for a moment.

"Neither of you are Adepts, right? Most corps are pretty happy to get their hands on a few more."

She'd have to call in a few favors and see if she could dig up some dirt on all this. It wasn't quite usual behavior for a corp, no matter how you looked at it. Whatever was going on, it could be big. Really goddamn big. Not that she'd go near something like that without a real good reason. Get too close to s*** like this, you're liable to disappear.

Shell nodded. "That's right, I thought it odd that EMA would send me to do work for Crest. For that matter, I'd like to determine whether those guys were actually with Crest or just pretending to be, to give them cover."

Shell stood up from her bar stool. "There's some investigation that needs to happen here. I'm going to contact EMA and let them know what happened. If the documents were altered after the fact, EMA will know for sure, but I can say with certainty that Crest wasn't mentioned on anything I signed prior to coming here."

She walked to the door. "Mr. Sorenson, I've sent my contact information. I will send you any information I am permitted. In the mean time, I'm headed back to EMAcorp to speak with my superiors."

With that, she headed outside to see that it had finally stopped raining. Shell quickly ran back to EMAcorp headquarters.

"They tried to use me as one of their lackeys to do their dirty work", Atlas added.

"If it's okay with you, I'd like to stick around and help investigate this."

Atlas shrugged. [OOC: ] "It's not like I have anything else better to do, anyway."

Duncan stood up from his seat. "Well, if we're all done here, I'm going to get going before Crest sends their people here. There's no doubt the folks you just kicked out have high-taiiled it back to headquarters and told their bosses about what happened, Crest or otherwise."

Duncan looked back toward the double doors at the back of the bar and then at the entrance. "Looks like it's stopped raining. I'm going to make sure I'm gone before they send more goons."

With that, Duncan quickly walked to the exit and left the premises, heading back to his dwelling on the other side of the city.

Shell walked back into the employee entrance and swiped her key card. Making her way to the elevator, she performed the usual retina scan and was soon on the floor with the head management offices. An unplanned visit to upper management was somewhat rare at EMA but Shell had urgent business - her most recent work order seemed to contain falsified information.

She wirelessly sent a message to her supervisor.

Under most circumstances, replies were very brief but prompt. Shell continued her brisk walk down the long hall on the 115th floor, awaiting some sort of response. Working hours were over but the higher ups had people on staff to field their communications around the clock, as a dire necessity given the nature of their business.

Shell reached the main section where her supervisor's office was. Her message still had no reply. Maybe his secretary is taking a short coffee break, she thought, but the secretary was a cyborg much like herself and had a constant connection to the 'net. Not wishing to overreact, Shell was beginning to feel a slight concern over the now five minutes without a response. In this day and age, e-mail responses inside EMAcorp were commonly within seconds, thanks to cybernetic communication interfaces.

Becoming somewhat impatient, Shell knocked on the door to her manager's office. The secretary would be in there at this hour, she thought.

No one answered.