Private Bank Statement

[Hacks]

Hacks typed with a dancers rhythm. Her four cybernetic arms afforded her an unparalleled advantage in slicing, forming codes at breakneck speeds. When she sent her Cerberus program into the Astcorp Chemicals subnet the slicer working as system security didn't even have time to blink before the cybernetics in his forebrain burnt out. A brutally efficient program that Hacks used for counter-intrusion but worked just as well in a coordinated attack.

She had been scouting Astcorp Chemicals for a week now, slowly leaking code into their systems, prodding their firewalls and testing the corporations counter-measure programs. Her target was Lachlan Dowe, a low-level executive working in Astcorps conflict investment department. Prophecy, a fixer working out of the Iridium club on Denon, had called her last week about the hit. Hacks was to break into Astcorp Chemicals network, frame Dowe as wanting to start a corporate coup, and exit the system without a trace. What Hacks decided to do was all that and more. She wanted everything he was worth.

Time was against Hacks, once some corpo found the systems slicer slumped in his office chair they would raise the alarm and shut her out. It wasn't exactly as 'without a trace' as Prophecy wanted, but screw 'em. She could put the blame on Dowe. She raced through directories, tearing asunder pulsating firewalls, obfuscated routers, blurring her end-to-end connection. She found Dowes drive, forcing pre-written incriminating documents into his file system.

Then she was in his datapads history, surfing through data as she soaked up accounts and passwords. Willay Banking. There it was. She swiped the keys and dove in, accessing his bank accounts. Just as she was about to drain the six figures from his accounts she was alerted by Willay Banking of an updated bank statement. The data refreshed and his account was completely empty, miliseconds before she was about to plunder it for herself. She shouted "No, what!?"

Someone else had beaten her to the punch. She backtracked instantly, paranoid Astcorp was onto her. She tore herself out of their systems, a digital explosion left in her wake. The entire job was botched in her moment of panic. She couldn't pin this on Dowe. Instead of Dowe waking up to CorpSec at his front door, Astcorp would instead be sending a legion of slicers to investigate what had happened to their subnet. Hacks unplugged from her headset, staring at a now-blank screen. She panted in the quiet of her apartment. She never screwed up like this, just who the hell was one step ahead of her? she wondered.

Johnny Diamonds​

 

[Johnny Diamonds]

Johnny's Soundscape (Post Soundtrack)
~ Under the electric lights, we all find illumination... ~


snap-pop


He sat at the massive, almost imposing desk, rolling his wrists until that familiar sound emanated from the joints, all the little bones grinding together before releasing in that ever so wonderful-yet-painful way. He been at it all night yet again, tippity tap-tapping on all the buzzing, humming, and beeping electronics scattered in front of him. The sound of a keyboard clicking away was more familiar to him than the sound of his own breathing. Yet, he was one of the few in the galaxy that really excelled at what he did. To him, slicing into a system wasn't just a survival trait, it was an artform. A delicate dance between human and machine. Synapses and Circuitry, signing a duet together in a wonder harmony of synthetic-organic fusion.


Still, even he had to take a break once and a while, retreat back into meatspace with the rest of the galaxy. Pulling his headset off, he laid it down on desk, reaching over in fluid motions to grab a can of whatever caffeine pumped swill he had laying around. At this point, taste wasn't even something he consciously registered. Hell, sleep itself annoyed the kark out of him. But such was the way of things. Of course, that was when it happened. A faint buzz off his TX-17. Scooping it up from the far side of the desk, he slid a finger over the release trigger, glasteel screen extending as he tapped a few times.

​

//incoming.message
//encryption... 14.7 moderate, init sapphire.protocol.exe
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..
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.....
//sapphire.protocol.exe running at 99.8%
//link established

Crezzle: G3m, my boy. Been a while. Thought you might have forgotten about me.

GemCyph3r: Heya, Crezz. No, just been busy.

Crezzle: Aww, G3m, don't go hurting my feelings now. It's time to pay up.

G3mCyph3r: Ok, ok. Give me 3 rotations and I'll have your creds.

Crezzle: One rotation, and only because I like you, G3m. Don't be late. You know what happens if you're late.

G3mCyph3r: I know, Crezz. I know. Have I let you down yet?

Crezzle: Not yet, and pray you never do.

//connection: terminated at source

Johnny set the Deck down, and sighed, leaning back into his chair. He supposed this was bound to happen. He'd been a hermit so long now, that he honestly lost track of time way too easily. Stupid, on his part, but thankfully, he had a few aces up his sleeve. After a few moments, he grabbed the Deck again, and began the rhythmic tippty-tap he did all too well.
He needed creds, and he needed enough to cover Crezzle. Which was a lot. Of course, he knew what this meant. Corp raid. Someone low enough ont he food chain to give him some burn time, but high enough to have what he needed cred-wise.

And that's when he landed on AstCorp. He had been poking around there a couple weeks back, just exploring, looking for opportunities should they present themselves. Tonight's victim: one Lachlan Dowe. Rumor mill had him pegged, and Johnnyboy figured he'd make an easy target. After all, scuttlebutt was that he was about to find himself at the bottom of the barrel soon enough. Then again, he could get deets on just about anyone and anything when it came to the corpo scumbags and the stuffed shirt shizheels that worked for them.

Like a surgeon, he sliced his way through AstCorp's backdoors, blazing through their subnet like thermonuclear wildfire. Yet, he barely made a sound, so to speak. His footprint was barely even noticeable except for normal AstSec traffic. Weird, however, that whoever they had on-duty at the keys tonight seemed to be non-existent. Logged in, for sure, but no activity. Odd, but Johnny had biz to take care of. Finding Dowe's directory in the subnet was easy. Through the Force, he made that Deck absolutely sing in hands, his physical speed almost three times faster than most could manage.

"Boom goes the dynamite."

There it was, his personal datapad's access point. 128bit encryption. He sliced through it like a lightsaber through durasteel. A few more taps, a quick scan, bam. Willay Bank. Account #6443091. Password... accepted. Hot damn, that's a lot of scratch! Johnny thought. And like a black hole, he sucked it all out in less time than it took a couple synapses to fire off in his head. Funds... routed. Took a little bit, and as he was about to cover his tracks, he noticed a second ping off the account.

"...huh?"

Johnny's brow furrowed, and he watched as AstCorp's subnet began lighting up like Coronet City at nightfall.

"Holy sithspit... Another Slicer? Shiz! Not kosher, not kosher at all!"

Closing his eyes for just a moment, he let the Force flow through him, guiding his fingertips across the glasteel screen of his deck like an absolute supernova of speed. He'd engineered this thing for such instances, but it had been a long time since he'd actually made use of it in such a manner. Wouldn't last long, might fry a few circuits doing so if he wasn't careful. And thankfully, he managed to to get out before anything could be traced back to him.A few flashing characters on the screen confirmed that. As far as AstSec would be concerned, he was a 14 year old girl on Corellia. Slugheads.

"Still, who in the everloving..." he muttered.

Swiveling over to his main rig, he checked the ping, and implemented a few programs he'd kept as a fallback to trace, or at least get an idea. After a little while, he realized that whoever it was that had seemingly piggy-backed him was here. On Nar Shaddaa. Son of a bantha, he really just headbutted another slicer on Nar Shaddaa. The odds were astronomical that he'd be in the same subnet at the same time, for the same reasons. Force be dammed, this was too weird to just let go of.

​

//CryptNet Access
//Init CryptAccess Protocol
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//Logged

Johnny sent a message out through the CryptNet, to a forum he knew ever single slicer, netrunner, gangster, and other scum kept an eye on. The message was simple.

​

//Your timing is really lachlan and your funds are really dowe. - G3mCyph3r

​

​

​

 

[Hacks]

Hacks had left her apartment, wanting to get some fresh air, or at least as fresh as the air could get on Nar Shaddaa. The midnight metro took her out of the Refugee Sector. She didn't check the destination, she just wanted to sit by the window and watch the Vertical City go by. The train moved through cloudcutters and thick columns of smog, airspeeders slashed across the night sky. The distant crack of slugthrowers and pops of blasters. Familiar sounds and sights.

She glanced out the window as a message came up on her glasses HUD. The image of Phase splashed across the window. The text was short; check the net. Hacks pushed aside the message, clearing her notifications. She liked to keep her notifications clean, messages regularly deleted, netmail purged after reading. She hated seeing someone with unopened notifications, or a full inbox they had neglected to tidy. The type of pet peeve that could burst a slicers forehead vein in frustration.

/>> (...) ~ QUERY RUNNING
/>> (..)
/>> ()
<\ RECORD -/10 [8-:02:03:17:26:41] CRYPT.NET#HACKS-I7-081749 >

Hacks booted up CryptNet on her augmented reality glasses. The city flashed by the window but her attention was peeling away to the virtual. She ran Cerberus.exe, her digital hellhound guarding her identity. She surfed the streams of data, recognising familiar code of slicers she was acquainted with back at the Iridium. To outsiders who never swam the vast oceans of the net it was utterly indistinguishable but in here it was as clear as day. Then a ping, a message that swept through the CryptNet. It was vague, meaningless to all bar Hacks.

//Your timing is really lachlan and your funds are really dowe. - G3mCyph3r

G3mCyph3r had swept the carpet out from under her back in the Astcorp subnet, now they were teasing her. It wasn't bad coding on her behalf, she told herself, they had simply been there a second sooner than she had. Coincidence. She cursed leaving her apartment, she was limited by her options on her glasses. She sent back a message.

// I blew out their back-end when you pulled that stunt, I've probably corrupted their electronegative capacitors when I tore out of their net like a bat straight out of hell. You're good, I didn't even notice you prowling his account. Lets meet. - Hacks

Her eyes danced across her glasses, the minute movements picked up by the internal computer and registering them as commands. Code formulated and were sent into the CryptNet for G3mCyph3r. Encrypted coordinates. He would have to bust through her own code to find the location if he wanted to meet up. A market back in the Refugee Sector, more precisely a noodle shop she frequented since moving into the neighbourhood. A stones throw from where apartment complex.

 

[Johnny Diamonds]

Johnny sighed lightly as he got up from his leathered chair, this time letting his head roll from shoulder to shoulder, little snaps and pops from the vertebrae in his neck. His luck was always playing out like this. Right place, wrong time. Every time. He needed some air not recyc'd by his custom filtration system. Grabbing his hooded black coat from it's peg near his apartment door, he slid it on as the door made a slight whooshing sound opening.

Standing there for a moment, he looked out over the railing of the landing as he pulled the hood up over his head. Producing a packet of smokes from the inner pocket, he slid a thin tube of the rolled roots from it. Next, a silver lighter emblazoned with a simplistic diamond that he used to light it. Inhaling deeply, he closed his eyes for a moment, tilting his head back and exhaling the blueish-tinted smoke out into the night sky.

"At least Crezz will get off my karking backside now..." he muttered under his breath.

Taking another drag of the smoke, he felt a faint vibration within his pocket. His eyes rolled inside their sockets, as he could only wonder what in the frag now? He reached into his pocket, grabbing his deck and sliding his finger over the release mechanism once more. Reading the strange characters that made their way across the glasteel, he saw the alert.

"New message, eh? Let's see. Maybe it's Crezzle thanking me for timely payment for once."

He almost cracked a grin, as THAT would have been hilarious to him. Tap-tappity-tap-tap goes the fingers once more.


​

//CryptNet.accessprotocall.init
//CryptNet encryption beginning
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//CryptNet Access Established

/dir.message.G3mCyph3r.815583-07
/passkey: ********

//Passkey Accepted, Decrypting message in
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..
.


// I blew out their back-end when you pulled that stunt, I've probably corrupted their electronegative capacitors when I tore out of their net like a bat straight out of hell. You're good, I didn't even notice you prowling his account. Lets meet. - Hacks

Johnny had to re-read that, unknowingly his mouth was hanging open, his smoke precariously dangling from his lower lip.

"...you've GOT to be shizzing me."

Hacks. If you ran the net, if you did any sort of biz in the circles he ran in, you knew the name. You knew to respect the name. One of the reasons he didn't directly jack into any net these nights. Never know when your frontal lobe might get hit by an electrostatic blender and you go comatose like droid whose power supply just died. And they wanted to meet? He raised an eyebrow at that. Since when did any slicer or netrunner want to meet in meat? Still, his curiosity was piqued.

"Oh, really? Encrypted Coords? Ok, let's play name that tune, shall we? Once more unto the breach..."


His eyelids slowly met in the middle, as he concentrated upon the Force. He let himself become one with his deck, fingertips blurring as they danced and raced across the screen like podracers locked in a battle for victory across the line. Lines of code flashed in a technicolor rainbow of hues, as codes began to melt away one by one. This was more advanced than he was used to, however. This was putting him to the test, and it was taking longer than expected. But so far, no trapdoors, no tripwires. No, this was done as exactly that, a test of his skill. It was a show of respect, which humbled him just a bit. And that in itself was no small feat.


"Boom goes the dynamite." he muttered shallowly, his breath bated after such exertion.

Hmmm. He knew of this place. A noodle stand a few klicks from his apartment. He looked out into night, looking across the vast cityscape, it's denizens in all manner of activity, nefarious and not.

"Nice night for a walk, Johnnyboy."


And with that, off he went.​

 

[Hacks]

The four-armed Edgerunner walked the markets, a heavy CorpSec camo coat kept her warm and an aging techpack hung from her shoulders. Combat boots stomped their way through the narrow paths. Her jet black hair slicked back and diverged into two long ponytails. The latest trend in alternative makeup marked her face, bright geometric designs. At seven foot and half-borg the woman was an imposing sight.

Hacks saddled up to the counter of the noodle stand. An elderly woman smiled warmly, silently sliding a bottle of beer across the counter. Homebrew, smelt of diesel and tasted like piss. Hacks loved it. She took the bottle by the neck and knocked the cap off with a metal flick of a mechanical finger. She downed half the bottle and lowered it onto the counter just as her noodles came.

She was such a regular at this stand that she didn't need to say what she wanted, she just got handed the food and drink, and passed the creds to the vendor. As she plucked at her late night feed she gave the occasional glance to the HUD in her data glasses, checking for an incoming message that never came. Did he receive her message, or was he still trying to decode her encryption? she wondered, then scoffed down another mouthful of noodles.

 

[Johnny Diamonds]

Johnny had kept a steady pace, making his way through the Refugee Sector with ease. Most of the time, he wasn't in any real hurry, as where the kark did he really have to be? The net was everywhere on this dammed moon, a connection only ever a tap or jack away. But this night, this was something different. This was the first time he'd wandered out for biz in the desert of the real in years. This night, he actually had to interact with meat. It was an odd feeling, to know what was coming, but hey, you only live twice.


As sparks flew from the nearly finished smoke, he clipped it off and tossed it over his shoulder. Never was an environmentalist, nor would he ever be. Right now, he felt a strange sense of apprehension as he came up near to the noodle stand Hacks had pinpointed for them to meet. Problem was, he had no idea what Hacks looked like. Hell, he didn't know if Hacks were a guy or a gal. Maybe neither? No. Karking. Clue.


"Ok, Johnnyboy, how we gonna play this?" he whispered to himself.


After a only a moment, but to him seemed an eternity, he had an idea! Dude, you are such a dumbarse sometimes, he thought. Reaching into his coat, he pulled his deck out of an inner pocket, and slid his finger over the release trigger. Quietly, he ducked into a shadowy corner, making sure no one was really looking for him. Either way, too late to back out now. Tapping on the screen a bit, he fired off a quick message. Well, as quick as a CrpytNet message could be.​

//CryptNet.AccessProtocol.init
//Accessing
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//dir.message.GemCyph3r.815583-07
//Send.#HACKS-I7-081749
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//Message.Body: Here. - G3mCyph3r


//Message.Sent

With that, he slid the Deck closed once more, sliding it back into his coat, and producing another rolled tube of the root.

~click~

He took another drag as the smoke lit, exhaling even more of the familiar, sweet scented blue smoke, waiting. Waiting for what, he wasn't sure. A message? Someone just waving like an old friend? A slug to the forehead? Force only knew, but in all honesty, he didn't sense anything nefarious, so he could only presume he was safe. Truth be told, if Hacks was half the runner they were made out to be, it wasn't them who Johnny had to worry about. Right now, it was AstSec. Only time would tell.​

 

[Hacks]

// Message.Body: Here. - G3mCyph3r

Hacks continued to eat as her eyes scanned the HUD of her data glasses. She frowned, not yet sure why he hadn't just come forward to the stand. "Oh don't tell me," she said to herself, not finishing the sentence that she had a sneaking suspicion he wasn't the edgerunning slicer type, he was the grandmas basement slicing type.

She dismissed the message and took a swig of her beer, swallowing down her noodles with a bitter wash. She swivelled on her seat to check the markets, plastic eyes searching for someone to stand out, yet everyone stood out here. A mental command to her glasses, connected to the cranial implant half-domes over her ears. The vision of her glasses shimmered and began registering devices emitting net signals.

Dozens of pings. Datapads in pockets or held in hand as customers walked the markets. Vendors registers and tills. Then there was another, almost out of view but for her enhanced sight. He stood smoking, perhaps a hint of nervousness on him. He looked to be waiting for someone. It must be him. Mental commands, minute eye movements, and her glasses wrote a reply.

/ / Message.Body: Come out, I don't bite. CorpSec coat, four arms. - Hacks

 

[Johnny Diamonds]

~brzzzzt - click~


As Johnny flicked the ash from his smoke, his deck vibrated within his coat once more. He'd been keeping watch across the throng of beings that sat, walked, lumbered, skittered, and rolled in all manner of ways, trying to figure out exactly who the mysterious Hacks might be. He'd narrowed it down to to a few he might suspect an elite-level netrunner. Of course, this was all pure fantasy on his part, his mind's way of trying to relieve the near crippling axiety he had. It had become almost a true handicap, but not quite yet. Johnny diamonds was nothing if not insufferable. The boy just would not quit, that was simple fact.

Sliding his deck out, fingertip slid, and glasteel extended.

​

/ / Message.Body: Come out, I don't bite. CorpSec coat, four arms. - Hacks

Johnny had to read that one more time. CorpSec coat? Irony, that was expected. But four arms? Four karkin' arms?? This he had to see, or, did he really want to? Morbid curiosity, or sheer bewilderment, he wasn't really sure. But he couldn't remember any species off the top of his head that had four arms he'd personally met before. Then again, Hutts were a thing, so whose to say. Sliding the deck back into it's comfy little home within his coat, Johnny took another drag from the valerian root smoke, looking into the crowd when he spotted her. A sort of camouflage print CorpSec coat, and yeah, four arms alright.
​

Slowly, he made his way over to the noodle stand where Hacks was sitting, and grabbed some preem real estate for himself, leaving a spot between the two. The old lady looked to him, then to Hacks, then back to him, as Johnny held a single finger up. "Fizz-nan, no moss." he said matter-of-factly. She smiled, and nodded, toddling off for the moment. He reached up, and pulled the hood of his coat back, rolling his neck slightly. He stubbed his smoke out in the ashtray on the counter in front of him. Yet never once did he actually turn his gaze to the four-armed, borg'd out monster of a woman next to him.

"So, Hacks, eh? Cool, cool. Name's G3m, but you can call me Johnny if you like. Johnny Diamonds, Slicer Dicer. Pleasure to like, make your acquaintance, or somesuch."


Jesus, Johnnyboy, You really HAVE been out of the loop, haven't you? ​

 

[Hacks]

The slicer slid up to the noodle stand, Hacks' eyes never left her bowl, "So, Hacks, eh? Cool, cool. Name's G3m, but you can call me Johnny if you like. Johnny Diamonds, Slicer Dicer. Pleasure to like, make your acquaintance, or somesuch." She finished her bite and glanced at him for a moment, plastic eyes running up and down his person. He was younger than she thought he would be, handsome too, in a boyish way.

"Nice skills back there on Willay," Hacks complimented him, "Maybe I'm just getting rusty, or too confident. I didn't even notice anyone else was in the system. I assumed I was alone." She returned to plucking at her bowl, taking a swig from her bottle of beer, "What were you doing fucking around with Dowes accounts? You butchered my hit, but I can't really blame you for that. If I was smarter I would have sniffed you out and locked you from his account."

She brought the bottle to her lips once more, craning her neck back as she finished what was left and motioned the elderly vendor for another. "You new to the circuit?" she asked further, "I don't recognise your handle or your face. Then again, our trade isn't the type to make themselves well known. Counter-productive to our work."

 

[Johnny Diamonds]

"Assumption. Mother of all Kark-ups since the dawn of time."

Johnny had to crack a bit of a grin at that, couldn't help it. Assumption landed him in some hot water a fair few times in his teenage years. Hell, most likely the only reason he was still breathing was due to learning that lesson the hard way a couple years back, actually. Still, he listened as Hacks spoke of Dowes and her fubar'd hit-job. Truth be told, if it wasn't for the fact that this chick was sporting an extra set of arms and what looked to be million-cred tech implanted in the sides of her head, he woulda felt bad about it. Plus, with her rep, he damn well knew she had creds to burn.

"Smarter? Nope. Smarter wouldn't have netted you anything. You shoulda been on the lookout from moment one. No Slicer-Dicer worth their circuitry goes into a subnet with total confidence." he said not with an air of arrogance, no. More like surprise. As the old stall tender sat a small bowl of what appeared to be neon purple tinted noodles, steaming hot, down in front of him. He smiled and nodded, tossing a small cred-chit down on the counter-top. She smiled in return, and scooped it up quickly, turning to scuttle away to the back. He savored the aroma, before finally turning his gaze on Hacks proper.

"I'm not trying to be arrogant or anything like that, I'm just a little surprised that someone with your rep wasn't more prepared. I've heard stories about you and if even half of em' are true, that was a universally stupid move on your part."

It was weird, Johnny almost felt like he was sitting in the presence of a netrunner legend. They say something along the lines of never meet your heroes, but this was different. This was like meeting someone who rode the apex of the game to the extreme. She was elite, one of the ones they called an Edgerunner. Still, maybe it was the fact that to Johnny, meatspace was less real to him than cyberspace. Still, one hopes she wouldn't hold it against him.

"New? Not really, I've been at this since I was like, 12 years old? But the past few years or so I've been keeping a low profile. Extremely low. To the point where you're likely the first person to see my face in that long. So, uh, yeah. Sorry if I come off kinda, well... you know. I'm just not used to being 'live and in-person' with people these nights."

Ok, Johnnyboy, better, better. Here's hoping she doesn't reach out with one of those four arms and smack the shiz out of you while she finishes off her beer with another.​

 

[Hacks]

Hacks drank as she listened to Johnny say, "I'm not trying to be arrogant or anything like that, I'm just a little surprised that someone with your rep wasn't more prepared. I've heard stories about you and if even half of em' are true, that was a universally stupid move on your part." She shrugged her shoulders, "I fried their only slicer running system-op. I was practically alone surfing their net till you bumped my wave, maybe not stupid, just unexpected."

She reiterated her remark about his activity on the net when Johnny continued, "New? Not really, I've been at this since I was like, 12 years old? But the past few years or so I've been keeping a low profile. Extremely low. To the point where you're likely the first person to see my face in that long. So, uh, yeah. Sorry if I come off kinda, well... you know. I'm just not used to being 'live and in-person' with people these nights."

Hacks cleared her bowl and pushed it away from her, rotating in her seat to face Johnny and resting two left arms on the counter, "I get it," she said. She tilted her head and winced, "Slicing isn't exactly an extroverts hobby." She had met plenty of data jockeys over the years who were social and extroverted, but she met all of them through networks and clubs. It was the data jockeys she never met or heard of, the silent stalkers of the net, the vast majority.

His own story wasn't too dissimilar to hers. She'd been writing code since she was a kid forced into the Red Raven Syndicate as a ward. Groomed to be the syndicates own slicer, until everything fell apart. Lately she had gone into hiding since leaving Denon and Darkwire behind. "Why the low profile?" she asked, curious.

 

[Johnny Diamonds]

"It's always when you think you're alone, chicadee. That's usually exactly the moment you find you are decidedly... not." he said almost absentmindedly. Twisting a pair of chopsticks through his fingers, he scooped up some of the still steaming purple tinted noodles, and slurped them down with gusto, as if he hadn't eaten in days. The reality was, he was finding out he was actually glad to be in the company of someone who knew what it was like to be someone like, well, him. The air smelled a little more pungent, the winds felt a little more cooler, the food tasted a little more, well ok, maybe not the food. Still, he found himself perking up just a bit inside the ol' skullsponge.

​

Turning his gaze back toward Hacks, he tapped his chin idly with the chopsticks. "Yeah. We ain't exactly social butterflies, are we?" he added with a wink. It was like, suddenly the 4 arms didn't seem to unnerve him. The whole seven foot tall borg'd out woman thing just didn't phase him, all out of the blue. Perhaps it was the Force, as it had a funny way of affecting Johnny's moods. At least, it used to. It hadn't in a long, long time. But then again, when one seals themselves away from life, even when it's over half synthetic, you lose that vital connection to the Living Force itself. Still, as she spoke once more, he set the chopsticks in the bowl of noodles, and turned his body now, resting an arm on the counter in a similar fashion. "Why the low profile?"

"Eh, honestly, I don't really like getting into it. But, let's just say people around me started disappearing, one by one. I don't have like, the faintest idea why. Maybe it was me? Maybe it was them? Maybe it was fate? Maybe it was the one-armed man? Who karkin' knows..."


Johnny's face became tinged with a pronounced sadness as he spoke, no matter how hard the 20 year old tried to hide it. He turned his gaze downward, and sort of choked out the last few words.


"...just didn't want to feel anymore, I guess."​

 

[Hacks]

A deep silence followed Johnny. For Hacks it was not an uncomfortable silence, just one where she took her time to think and talk. How people accepted silence was something she had always considered important. There were those content in those moments to say nothing, but others felt the need to squirm as anxiety crept into their minds, filling the void.

She felt a sense of comradery with Johnny through their shared experiences of friends going missing and their passion in slicing, she also felt a sense of nurturing. He was young with potential, not that she was all that much older in her thirties, but there was a world of experience between them. She gripped her beer bottle, watching the condensation trailing down the glass and over her mechanical fingers.

"I lost a few good friends," she said in shared grief, "They disappeared on Denon in the early days of Darkwire. I'm the only one left of that original crew. I can only imagine that the Corpos black-bagged them, or they had their brains boiled while running code. Never seen their bodies. One day they were there, talking to me over the CryptNet, the next nothing. I just never heard from them again. Maybe they got out."

She finished the bottle, the last for now, and slid the empty glass towards the elderly vendor. Curling a mechanical fist she gave a gentle punch to Johnnys shoulder, "How bout you come chill at mine, I want you to see some code I'm slinging, I want your thoughts." Before he could say no, she hiked a thumb over her shoulder to an apartment complex beyond the markets. Brutalist architecture with dilapidated duracrete. "I don't live far."

 

[Johnny Diamonds]

Johnny shook his head quickly and abruptly, like a prize fighter shaking off a stiff jab to the jaw. He tried to shake it off, that feeling of being absolutely alone in a room full of people. That sort of feeling you get when you feel really uncomfortable in almost any given situation where the amount of people other than yourself is more than zero. He took a quick breath in, and let it out as he turned back to face the counter proper. He pushed the bowl of noodles from his spot, as if to signal he was done. Looking to Hacks once more, he listened as she told him of her friends now vanished into this air. No trace, no word, no nothing. Just gone. She was right about one thing, it was either a well-done skullsponge or they really did get out. The former seemed to be a karkload more common than the latter, thought.


"Ow."


He winced a bit, as Johnny figured Hacks must not know her own strength at times. He figured it was meat to be playful of sorts, and kind of cracked a small smile smile from the corner of his mouth. Her... apartment? Johnny quirked a brow at that. Only two reasons for that kind of invite. One; she was just as lonely as he was and like him, didn't really want to admit that some company out here in meatspace would do her good. Or two; she was gonna off him like he was an insect encroaching on her turf. Either way, Johnnyboy knew this would be interesting to say the least. Thankfully for him, he didn't feel anything too unnerving within the influence of the Force, so much like he always did...


Johnny Diamonds took a risk. A chance and a prayer to the 'net gods. "Alright. But if you try to show me any weird, hardcore smut, I'm out. Dig?" he said with a wink and a lighthearted chuckle. He really was trying, even if his jokes fell on deaf ears.​

 

[Hacks]

The two left the markets together, trailing a path through an urban jungle of rusting droids, overdosing organics and cloudcutters of dizzying height. The Refugee Sector was a hellscape of widespread misery brought about by the greed of the few. It was also home for Hacks. She had spent the last fifteen years living in squalor by choice, hiding herself in the shadows of other peoples personal demons. When she fled the Dragon Palace Casino during the Red Raven Syndicate mutiny she became a wanted woman. That had never changed, not once, in the fifteen years since.

Hacks took Johnny into an apartment complex with the two front doors sporting broken frames, shattered glass scattered the ground outside where windows above had been smashed, whether by some argument inside or stray bolts from a passing gunfight of local swoop gangs. Living detritus hovelled in darkened corners by the stairs, whispering as they prepared spice to be injected. Hacks took the flight of stairs up, the elevators long out of service. Down dimly lit hallways splashed in graffiti and the occasional splatter of dried blood.

The pair turned sharply right through a doorway and into her apartment. Flickering fluorescent lights hung overhead, casting long shadows across the floor. The kitchen was clean and orderly but the rest of the apartment was a mess. Sheets strewn across the durasteel tiles, clothes piled in a corner. A hundred different band posters plastered across the walls. By the only window looking out over the Vertical City was her desk, bright light from a half dozen monitors beckoned them to come closer.

"Welcome," Hacks announced, all four hands spread wide in a show of home pride. Then the seven foot mod-junkie was crossing the apartment towards her desk, deep heavy thuds followed her mechanical footsteps. Her head hung low, back and shoulders hunched in a common manner among those who spent too much time in front of a screen. "Check it," she said, hiking a thumb to her computer screens as she pulled out a chair and dropped herself down. Four hands typed with dizzying, unnatural speed and a program was launched. "I call it SlaveNet, a browser I'm programming. Quantum encryptions, IP-scramblers, false STPs to keep users anonymous." She pushed back on the chair and rolled away, offering Johnny a chance to glance over the code.

 

[Johnny Diamonds]

Johnny followed Hacks as they left the food stalls, and weaved around all the various life that seemed to litter such a dead planet. It was strangely beautiful to the young netrunner, this juxtaposition of wealth and squalor. Fat-cat corpos and well-fed gangsters in their towers of permacrete and glasteel, looking down at the rest of them, the hopeless dregs of the galaxy. But these two, despite only having met, shared a very close bond, even if neither realized it quite yet. See, they wanted to be here. They chose this life. This was where they were comfortable. Hacks might hide within the demons of others, but Johnny hid within the confines of his own violent and terrifying past. He was young, sure, but he'd seen enough to last him two lifetimes already.

Soon enough, they ducked into an apartment complex much like his own. Hell, they lived on the same mega-block. Figures. Great minds, or something to that effect. Even had a similar scent of urine, old booze, and despair. What a wonderul bouquet, to be sure. Eventually, they ducked around a corner, and into Hacks' unit. A chithole. Just like his. Though, he had to give her one thing. She had one-up on his place. "Lucky. You have a window." he said absentmindedly, looking at all her posters. They shared a few of those too, it seemed.

She then gave him a dramatic little welcome, and Johnny cracked a grin, and smiled. She soon sat down in front of her 'command center', and began typing away furiously as she described what she was bringing up. As she pushed back, Johnny was a bit taken back. To most people, it didn't mean a damn thing. To people like Johnny and Hacks, it was an invite to look at the screen. Which meant she was letting him look at her work. He must have left a hell of an impression back in the AstCorp subnet. Slowly, he leaned in, and began to let himself fall away into the digital sea of characters in front of him. Like riding the waves of Naboo on a windjammer, he just dove into it, his brain analytical as it began searching for congruities, mistakes, and other little minutia. "Hey, looks like your syntax is kinda wonky here..." he said idly, pointing at a specific line of code on the screen.

And then, he paused, and looked over at her, his eyes slightly glassed over. "Did you say... SlaveNet?" He just wanted to be sure he heard that right, not that he had a problem. It's just that the word Slave could only mean one thing: Hutts. And Johnny did not exactly get on with the Hutts. Not since the time he... well, we won't get into that just yet. Still, the look on his face was one that could be misconstrued, but no one ever accused Johnny D of being straight up all the time when it came to that.

 

[Hacks]

Johnny leaned in and began to examine when he stiffened at the sight of a future bug, "Hey, looks like your syntax is kinda wonky here..." he said idly, pointing at a line of code on the screen. Hacks frowned, scooting her chair closer. She raised a mechanical hand to the side of her head where a dome implant covered both her ears. Her fingers seemed to connect with an input and suddenly half pair of datagoggles slid out of either dome, extending forward over her eyes and then metal and plugs connected at the front.

Her other three hands were held behind her head as fingers grasped at wires hung from the ceiling, jacking the cords into cranial implants. She was connecting her mind directly into her computing system. Her body twitched then relaxed, her face stared blankly ahead at the screen. "Thanks," she said to Johnny, her face emotionless, almost a vegetative state, mouth ever so slightly agape.

The code Johnny had pointed out suddenly vanished on the monitors as twenty mechanical fingers operated her keypad with incredible speed. From her view she no longer saw the monitors. The program was a living, breathing reality, of which she had godlike access as the administrator of the SlaveNet. Johnny's voice became distant, as if he were speaking to her as she lay underwater.

"Did you say... SlaveNet?" Johnny asked, his question reverberated through netspace. Hacks' eyes glanced around, seeing only vast oceans of coding. In meatspace her hands continued to type, on the screen new lines were replacing the old. When Hacks spoke to Johnny, her face seemed completely indifferent, "Yeah, SlaveNet. Its original iteration was a marketplace for the selling of slaves. Whatever, big whoop. If I don't write it some other bozo will, may as well write it myself and take the creds."

The monitors paused. Hacks reached back to the plugs at the back of her implants and pulled them free. Life sprung back to her face and body, shoulders rolled and her brow stretched up and down, as if she had just woken up. She continued, "But I got ambitious. CryptNet is secure enough for the Black Market, but not for the Invisible Market. The real shit that only the top of the food chain know about. Why don't I just program my own net for the Invisible Market, take a small cut of the deals as an admin fee."

 

[Johnny Diamonds]

Damn... thought the young Corellian. Hacks' set-up was something else entirely. The woman was practically an entire computer herself! He watched with wonder as she began grasping at the myriad plugs dangling above her head, jacking them into ports along her head, some near the occipital ridge itself. Absolutely wild, and massively impressive to the twenty-year old Slicer. Sure, he had an implant or two himself, having had his left-eye replaced a little while back with a top-of-the-line Shinsen model. It's why he'd been in the damn AstCorp subnet earlier that evening. Kinda left him a bit on the broke side. Nakaioma cybernetics were NOT cheap whatsoever. Still, that was small time compared to this borg'd out netrunner sat in her chair, looking for all intents and purposes dead to the world around her.

"Damn, choomba, this set up is nova." he said idly, as he looked around, inspecting the various gear. He took extra care not to interfere with anything as he knew the risks involved with the sort of interfaces she was using. She went on further after his comment about her server's name. Made a lot of sense to him, actually. Everything that was gonna happen, well, it tended to happen regardless. She was right in that if someone was gonna make an absolute kark-ton of creds doing it, she might as well. And that's when that little demon that sat on Johnny D's shoulder spoke all quiet-like to him. Offer her your help. She's going to be sitting on more creds than anyone could imagine soon enough. Better get on that maglev before it leaves the port, eh? Greedy little bastard, but it was right. Alot of 'right' coming out of the woodwork this night, it seemed. And Johnny could not see a fething thing wrong with that.

As Hacks seemingly came back to meatspace, Johnny spoke up after she finished explaining her motive. "The Invisible Market... yeah, I know that deal all too well. I just haven't really had the stones to try anything big yet. Truth be told, I could, but I don't really want to go it alone if I'm gonna dive into that whole nest of mynocks, you know? But, if you already got skin in the game, I could always lend you a hand or two, not that four isn't enough." he said with a wink and a sly grin forming at the corner of his mouth. This was not an offer he made lightly. People like Johnny and Hacks preferred to work alone. But this? This was something where they would both benefit from a mutual working relationship.

Question was, would Hacks accept his offer?

 

[Hacks]

Johnny spoke as she finished her explanation of SlaveNet, "The Invisible Market... yeah, I know that deal all too well. I just haven't really had the stones to try anything big yet. Truth be told, I could, but I don't really want to go it alone if I'm gonna dive into that whole nest of mynocks, you know? But, if you already got skin in the game, I could always lend you a hand or two, not that four isn't enough."

Hacks looked at him for a moment, a frown creasing her forehead as Johnny winked and grinned. "No," she said flatly, and seemed like she was ready to end that discussion altogether. She rotated in her chair and thought for a moment, "I like you, I like your style, but I don't really know you," she then hiked a thumb, "I showed you this because I know you can't steal it," she said, almost taunting him to try.

Her eyes scanned him up and down, her glasses performing rudimentary facial recognition and downloading a rap sheet. "I like to know the people I'm working with, really know, before I let them touch anything under the hood." She studied his physique for a moment, guessing if anything happened in the next few seconds after what she was about to divulge she could take him down, not out of skill but mechanical strength.

"I got lots of enemies, it's why I live in this shithole. Plenty of people in Darkwire want me dead, and I can say the same about those cowards, same goes for the Family and the Red Ravens - or what's left of them these days. The Corporate Authorities have me on their hit lists, I'm not even safe from threats in the Consortium. Hell, I've broken into the Jedi Temple on Coruscant and sliced into the Alliance Senate floor, just about half the galactic disc has a reason to put a slug in my head. Everywhere I go someone's got a target trained on my back."

She shrugged, studying his reaction, "It's why I can't work with just anyone off the bat, maybe someday soon when I see what type of metal you're made of, but right now, no." She pushed off from her chair and brushed past him, walking towards the kitchen in the corner and cracking open her fridge, back to him. She reached in and plucked out two bottles of beer, then turned and tossed one across the room to him, "No hard feelings," she said. A metal finger flicked the cap off her own bottle and rose the glass to her lips.

 

[Johnny Diamonds]

Well, that was that. Story of his life, really. Always. Every karking time. No. Eh, this time, Johnny didn't really get upset at it. Truth be told, it was actually the best possible answer. If she hadn't come right out and said it, Johnnyboy would have most likely took off right then and there. You don't just meet another netrunner, end up in their nerf-infested chithole apartment, and then end up their karking partner. He respected it, told him exactly what he needed to know about her.

Nodding lightly, he slid a prismatic silver coated packet from his inner jacket pocket, and took out a red-tinted cigarra. Something he lifted off one of the passerby back at the food stals when Hacks wasn't paying attention to him. He took a small lighter out, and lit the cigarra, taking a drag. Oof, that's a spicy meat-a-ball! thought Johnny, as he listened to Hacks go on about the Darkwire, the Family, and the Red Ravens. The Ravens, he had zero clue about. The Family? Even he'd heard whispers of them on the CryptNet. Now the Darkwire, they thought they were big time slicer-dicers, and had every trick up their sleeve. Truth of the matter was, they couldn't slice their way out of a paper bag compared to him. Amateur hour, really, and Johnny had to stifle a laugh as the Ryll worked it's way through his lung tissue, slowly giving him that warm fuzzy feeling as he heard Hacks talk about them.

She wanted to see what he was made of, eh? Heh. He just made her look like a one-armed old woman with 3 fingers left, and she still wanted more proof? Johnny was beginning to like this girl more and more. Even thought she was kinda cute in her own borg'd out kinda way. The ryll-laced cigarra hung from his lips as he spoke, hopping up onto some crate or what have you that she had wedged up against the wall, leaning up against the cracking plaster. "I can see what you mean, chicadee. The Jedi Temple ain't exactly a hard spot to breach, and the Senate floor isn't anything to write home about. I think I sliced their d-base when I was what, 13? You aren't the only one to have corpos on your back. Lucerne wouldn't mind seeing me behind force fields, and I can tell you that the Mandolorians would love to see me take the ol' dirt nap, dig? You want to be impressed? So do I." he took another drag, before offering the ryllspice cigarra to Hacks after another hit. "I'm flesh and blood, chicadee. Not metal, at least not yet. But if you had said anything other than 'no' to my offer, I woulda put a hole right in the middle of your forehead, comprende?"

Johnny grinned wide, the ryll hitting him like a fething wall at this point, inhibition be dammed. No more Mr. Hide-And-Go-Slice anymore. "I tell you what. How about we do something together, even 50/50?" he said as his grin got just a tad wider. "Yeah... Hacks an' ol' Johnnyboy. We can definitely be chooms, if you got the stones to hang." he said with a wink, a twinkle in his left eye. Hot damn, G3mCyph3r was back, baby! Maybe being out in meatspace wasn't going to be as bad as he thought after all.