Private Mystery in the Clouds

[Grant Navarro]

​

CLOUD CITY
AFTER THE EVENTS OF HEAD IN THE CLOUDS
Nadi Arris Windrun

He had been observing the same building for about three hours now. It all looked normal enough, except for every little sign that screamed wrong to him. The building was registered to a company that couldn't have more than about a dozen people. So why then had about 30 walked in and out of the premises in the past three hours? Some had disappeared inside and never returned. Others came and went. Then a few exited the building that Grant had never seen walk in, in the first place.

Then the speeders: three had arrived in the last thirty minutes. Empty when they arrived, empty when they left.

And last but not least, a sleepy firm like this shouldn't have more than a rent-a-cop stationed out front. So ask Grant why they had three veterans set up on key junctions down and across the street? They were fancy about it too. Old clothes, one had even grown out his beard and hair to look like a bum, another was pretending like he was reading the newspaper on a nearby bench.

Except with the time spent on that newspaper, he could have invented a whole new edition on the fly.

No, something was definitely wrong.

Mercy 's intel had been sparse. Nothing more than a name of a lawyer who kept showing up on random jurisdiction papers. That lawyer was employed by a mid-sized brokerage firm that had two locations on Cloud City. A small office, that hadn't seen any activity in six months by the looks of the paper pile-up and this warehouse. Which had way too much activity.

His fingers itched to get inside, but the boss woman had been clear about it.

Observe, scout, wait for back-up.

Back-up didn't take long either. A car stopped a street over, thank Coruscant it didn't stop right next to the warehouse, so he wasn't dealing with amateurs. He waited for them to stroll on over before Grant nodded.

"Nadi, Windrun, I presume." Descriptions matched. Nadi looked relatively normal, if a little pale, but Windrun was a freak if Grant had ever witnessed one. Not a judgement call, Grant didn't mind freaks. But it made it rather obvious what he was dealing with. He gestured with his wrist-comm and a ping appeared on both their devices. The comings and goings, the observations he had made so far. "One hell of a mess we got here."

 

[Nadi]

"Navarro."

Not a question so much as a statement.

She'd had some time to recover in the thankfully quiet ride over here, and her dampener was tuned to thirty percent now; low enough that her voice could carry to those in her immediate vicinity. She raised her datapad and began reviewing his intel.

<It's pretty karking shady all right, but nothing that seems to indicate.... Ah. The lawyer.>

On paper, he should have been an invisible nobody, and while Nadi had no interest in trying to decipher legal briefs and papers, even she could tell that his name was surfacing with alarming frequency in the roadblocks that were being thrown up in the negotiations.

"Any sign of him on-site?"

It would certainly make things easier if he was here. Much less tracking and running and hunting.

<It would also make things less fun.>

She closed here eyes and worked to reign herself in, but it was slower going than usual. She'd felt the anticipation building the entire ride over here, and it was getting more and more difficult to hold it back.

What's that saying about dams and floods?

Grant Navarro | Arris Windrun​

 

[Arris Windrun]

Grant Navarro | Nadi
​

It didn't take long for Arris to find and steal them an airspeeder. It was inconspicuous, too, registered to a local courier service. They'd surely miss it, but it also meant they wouldn't stand out when they arrived.

"Nice to meet ya in the flesh, Grant," Arris loved to drop a first name among strangers. "Glad to see you're more than just a dossier on my desk."

Being surrounded by ex-Alliance officers, even if half of them were incarcerated fraudsters and war criminals by the time the Alliance fell, gave Windrun an inside track. Still, much of his existence had been stricken from the records as the fallen government planned to cover its clandestine ass. Even the ISB had trouble figuring it all out.

Arris received her ping internally, thanks to the co-processor lodged inside her meatcomputer. She processed the data as her eyes fell upon the building.

Nadi had already asked the good question, so Arris would lay claim to the bad one.

"Why don't we just march right through the front door?"

She found that blunt and incorrect questions like that inspired a certain kneejerk analysis in paranoid survivors like she expected a former Alliance Special Forces operative to be. Arris fully anticipated him to triple-assess what he already knew of the risks involved, which would give her a clearer picture of the threat vector and - if they were lucky - a plausible point of entry.

Still, given the cyborg's reputation and dry delivery, she wouldn't be shocked if he took her at face value. Wouldn't be surprised if Nadi did, either, perhaps knowing even less about Arris Windrun.

Arris reached into her pocket, drawing another one of her mildly psychedelic cigarettes. Lit, pulled, exhaled. She held it out between the two, a lazy offer without a word.

 

[Grant Navarro]

Arris Windrun | Nadi

"Any sign of him on-site?"

He shook his head after a moment of consideration.

"Several figures came in and out that had a paper bag quality to them." Grant elaborated without further hesitation. "But not our particular problem. I don't think it would matter if he was here." Brows furrowed as he brought up the data that he had just shared with them. To attend them to a few particular points he had noticed.

"The lawyer might be the face, but I don't think taking him out would solve our issue. They'd just replace him with another bag man."

Grant glanced towards Arris and inclined his head, more respectful this time.

"Ma'am." Grant retorted, when Arris used his first name on him. If Nadi was a fellow contractor, then Windrun was basically the boss coming to breathe down their necks. "No. I don't smoke. Thank you."

"Why don't we just march right through the front door?"

"We could. There are three vets stationed, but we could take them out before they'd notice us. With you along, we could probably deal with anything inside too. But just as with the lawyer... taking out the building, wouldn't kill the operation, it would just shift it."

There had been too much traffic, something that would be shown across their data pads.

"My suggestion is, we sneak inside, we figure out what's happening... and then reassess. I haven't been inside for obvious reasons."

 

[Nadi]

She nodded at his assessment and tilted her head at Arris' straightforward question.

<They're bound to be watching the back too, and at least we know where the sentries are in the front. Why don't we just march right through the front door?>

...but quietly.

"We go in the front. I'll take the bum."

She'd been watching the three sentries since she arrived, and they'd been at it long enough to fall into a pattern. Roughly every half a minute, there was a nine second window where both of the others were looking away from the bearded one. It was into this window that she stepped, moving quickly without rushing as she approached the sentry in question.

By the time she reached him five seconds later, her dampening field was back at full power and he seemed to realize something was off as she approached, his eyes narrowing despite the appearance that her gait would carry her past him without slowing.

Maybe it was the utter silence of her movement.

Whatever the case, appearances were correct and she didn't change her stride at all as she passed him, simply reaching out to snatch him by his collar and haul him along with her. She could hear him trying to shout a warning, but knew it would be inaudible to anyone else. His fists beat on her arm to try and get her to let go even as he realized the futility of shouting, and he grabbed his commlink to at least try and signal the others.

She fried it with a thought as she pulled him around a corner and out of sight into an alley, then brought her other hand up to flick him in the temple, hard, and knocked him unconscious with a second to spare.

As far as his comrades would be concerned, he'd simply vanished in the moment they looked away.

Assuming they even had the chance to notice.

Grant Navarro | Arris Windrun​

 

[Arris Windrun]

Grant Navarro | Nadi
​

Arris pulled back her declined cigarette and kept smoking. She was rather quick with it, dragging it down to the roach and tossing it aside a few seconds later. Slowly, she exhaled a thick fog.

"Fair enough," she replied to Grant.

As much as Arris thought to cause trouble, she wanted things to go smoothly. Least of all, to get the fuck off Bespin.

Nadi decided to go after the bum. That was all Arris needed to hear to know that they had chosen a plan, and things were about to get fun. As the new woman moved into action, Arris glanced at Navarro.

"I'll take the paper boy," she said dryly.

Then she was off, too.

Arris kept an eye on Nadi, quiet as a shadow, as she hauled her mark off into an alleyway.

The Sith Lord's own approach took advantage of the blind spot created by the bum's removal. By the time she crossed behind the bench - the paper reader catching her in his periphery - it was already too late. The cyborg's hand reached under his chin and gave his neck a quick snap. He died an instant, his head falling forward. Paper still in hand. He looked to be dozing off.

Her attention was briefly snatched by what he was reading. "Oh - interesting." An announcement that the Republic had captured a Sith. Someone Arris and Mercy knew.

She didn't stop moving, eventually waiting beside the entrance for the other two to rejoin her. When they had, Arris was the first to step inside, but honestly... nothing prepared her for what they saw.

"Really? They can't expect us to fall for this..."

It appeared to be a small, empty office space, no bigger than a reception room at the med clinic. There were no obvious doorways that led further into the building, and the desk was unmanned. Arris had already disconnected the pair of cameras covering the space. Easy enough. She sensed them as soon as she reached the front door.

She looked at Grant and Nadi. "Gotta be a button on the desk, right?"

 

[Grant Navarro]

Arris Windrun | Nadi

"Guess we are doing this..."

Grant would have preferred a quieter approach that didn't involve engaging against three veterans at once. So many things that could go wrong, but thankfully none of it transpired.

The third vet was disabled right along with the first and second.

By the time that Windrun and Nadi stepped inside, Grant followed quietly behind them without voicing a complaint. At the end of the day he was just a contractor here. His eyes calmly took in the sight. This organization was definitely hiding something, because just as Arris said, nobody with any knowledge of their dealings would believe in this crisp clear office space.

She looked at Grant and Nadi. "Gotta be a button on the desk, right?"

Grant was already moving around the desk.

First observation didn't reveal anything, but then he knelt and looked under the desk. A moment of focus and one part of the texture was noticeably different than the other. He pressed into the veneer and something hissed. In front of Nadi and Arris one of the bookcases slid to the side, revealing an entrance.

The Firrerreo pushed himself back up to his feet and watched that along with them.

"This is turning into some scooby-doo shit." He glanced at them. "You know, that Coruscanti show with the smart Akk Akk dog? Anyway, you two go ahead there, I am going to see if the computer has anything useful. I will catch up."

 

[Nadi]

<The kark is a scooby doo?>

She didn't spend too much time wondering as she nodded an affirmative and stepped into the hallway beyond. There were three guards just reaching the open doorway to investigate, and one already had his rifle half raised.

<The things I do for clients...>

She reached out and grabbed the blaster's muzzle, silencing the shot he fired into her hand. A second shot went off as she yanked it out of his grip, then her hand was over his mouth so he couldn't scream a warning. Which, in hindsight, may not have been the most efficient option. Turns out people actually scream louder when a red-hot palm is smashed across their lips.

Her other hand hadn't been idle, and her own pistol was already out of its holster and smoking by the time the guard in front of her started screaming, a single blast in the forehead of each of the other two guards.

She knew her dampener would muffle the shots, and didn't want to entrust stealth to the woman who was apparently notorious for being loud and obnoxious.

Without removing her hand, she turned the pistol on the one remaining and put him out of his misery, then turned back to Arris.

"What is it we're looking for in here? Data or individuals?"

Arris Windrun | Grant Navarro​

 

[Arris Windrun]

Nadi | Grant Navarro
Down & Out​

Arris had reached for her revolver, but honestly, she just stopped and watched Nadi, who took all three out with a most impressive bit of fighting. Windrun's handgun slumped back into its holster, and instead the cyborg Sith's hands rested upon her hips. She grinned widely and snickered.

"Well shit!" She laughed properly, giving one of the corpses a kick for good measure - making sure, that's all. "Where'd ya learn to fight like that?"

It had been a while since Arris felt delighted during moments like these. Usually, it was a job, bitter and ugly. Other times it was war, and that was just more bitter and way uglier. Nadi reminded her of a Black Sun, or maybe even a Sneaky Shen if they'd ever gotten their acts together. It was the sense of her, is all, more than the particularities of her person or skill. Though those certainly carried the impression further.

But the new hire had asked a very good question, and Arris, diligent reader of reporters that she was, had an answer.

"Lawyer or his data file. Anything that can tell us who the fuck is messing with our deal. Once we know?" She gave Nadi a finger gun, silently mouthing a 'pew' and winked. "I'm sure you get the idea... unless you're really bad at charades."

She moved forward, stepping lazily over one corpse, kicking another to the side, and crushing the other's chest in with her heavy step.

However, the further inside they ventured, the more things seemed off. Desks were abandoned. Drawers opened. Datapads piled up in a corner. The technopath knew immediately that their memory had been wiped. Hell - she thought - they must've been tipped off.

"Don't let them down the lift!" She heard someone cry out to her left. Her attention snapped that way immediately. Some office worker who desperately slammed the buttons, hoping to summon it himself. Whoever Arris had heard must've taken the last ride.

Arris turned on her heel and marched towards him instead. He looked to her. Then back to the buttons. Back to her. Then back to the buttons. He was freaking out, cursing under his breath, and when he looked back again, Arris was right there, leaning against the wall.

"Hey - need some help?"

Whoever ran security had managed to lock out the controls, but again, they were dealing with Arris Windrun. A Mechu-deru master. It kinda got old, actually. She missed the old days of hotwiring panels. Sometimes she did it anyway, for the kicks, but with time-sensitive matters? Mercy's involvement, no less? Arris sadly couldn't afford the detour.

The controls clicked on their own, and the lift hummed louder and louder as it reached their floor. The door opened. The office worker tried to flee inside, but Arris just threw him back against the wall, knocking him out cold. She stepped aside, gesturing towards the lift with her eyes on Nadi.

"After you."

 

[Nadi]

"Lawyer or his data file. Anything that can tell us who the fuck is messing with our deal. Once we know?" She gave Nadi a finger gun, silently mouthing a 'pew' and winked. "I'm sure you get the idea... unless you're really bad at charades."

"I'm alright."

She signed as Arris moved deeper into the building. She was content to let her take the lead, and quickly reached the same conclusion Arris had. Someone knew they were coming.

It made things.... difficult, with Navarro. Nadi had been with Arris from the moment she got the job to now, so unless the leak happened before that it wasn't her. That left Navarro, who'd been here alone for who knows how long. She hadn't gotten traitor vibes off the man, but...

<I've been wrong before. So now I have to make with the paranoia. Gorram karking nerf herder.>

Not Navarro specifically (unless it was), but whoever had leaked their arrival. They were making her tap into instincts she tried very hard to keep buried, and for very good reasons.

<This isn't going to end well for anyone.>

Arris had been moving somewhat faster than her, so Nadi reached the lift at about the same time the suit was crumpling to the floor.

"After you."

Her stride never changed as she walked past and into the lift.

"What do you think. Up or down?"

Arris Windrun | Grant Navarro​

 

[Arris Windrun]

Nadi | Grant Navarro
Down & Out
​

It was a good question that didn't take Arris long to answer. "Down."

She pressed the button, and the lift descended. These people were cowards, she figured. She didn't expect them to have the courage, let alone presence of mind, to pull a bit of misdirection like that. They probably figured their fancy building was all the obfuscation they'd ever need. Anything else? Well, that's what the guards were supposed to take care of.

But they were dead. At least the ones up top, anyway.

When the lift doors opened again, they were faced with something else.

Dead bodies.

She noticed a telltale sign almost immediately. "Shot in the back." One body. "Back of the head." Another.

Arris bent down beside a corpse. It was leaning against the wall, with a trail of blood behind it. "This one didn't die immediately. Tried to run, I think."

Given that they were the only unclean kill... "Taken by surprise?"

Before she could investigate further, there was a sound coming from a nearby supply closet.

The Sith nodded at Nadi to check it out.

 

[Nadi]

Nadi pursed her lips and almost decided to simply move on, but stepped up to the closet and shoved the body blocking the door aside. She could already hear the sounds of whirring servos and small wheels sliding as they failed to find purchase on the floor, and with the obstacle now removed the small hatch at the bottom of the door slid open to emit a little cleaning droid.

"It's going to have its work cut ou...."

<There's something else.>

Another sound from the closet, now that the droid was free of it and the racket had receded.

<Quick, labored breaths, rapid heartbeat.>

She wrenched the door open and instinctively jerked her head to the side as a bolt seared past her cheek. She could take a lot of punishment, but it still hurt and she wasn't....

The second bolt caught her collarbone, and a low growl sprang from her throat as she pushed inside and snatched the pistol from the closets single occupant. It was a woman, pantoran by the look of her, and likely not into her fourth decade. Her attire was professional by local standards, and Nadi suspected she was a staff member that had been overlooked in the purge.

She hauled her to her feet and out into the hall, standing her up against the wall. The woman sunk back to the floor the moment Nadi released her, hands rising to protect her face.

"P-please don't kill me! I just file papers! I don't know anything!"

<Except that they're killing people who know things, apparently.>

"We are not those who killed your colleagues."

<Well... not most of them.>

"These papers you file. Where are they kept?"

The woman didn't seem relieved by the clarification of identity, but she managed to indicate a room three doors down.

"In there. And backup copies in the archive room on the bottom floor. Please don't..."

Nadi tuned her out and turned to Arris. If they were working their way from the top down, it's possible they hadn't gotten to the archive yet. There was a chance those records were still intact, but they had to move fast.

"Back to the lift."

She was already moving as she spoke, and motioned for Arris to stop before stepping into the lift and selecting the top floor. Slipping out as the doors closed, she waited for the empty lift to clear the floor then pried the doors open to reveal the similarly empty shaft.

"After you."

Arris Windrun | Grant Navarro​

 

[Arris Windrun]

Nadi
Down & Out​

Back to the lift...

Arris sighed and stepped inside; this time first to enter.

"You know she could've been lying. She's a loose end." The Sith casually remarked.

Whether or not that woman was a problem, Arris did wonder if it was a mistake to let her go. But then again, she didn't kill the man a floor above. So who was Arris Windrun to say what a loose end was?

As the lift ascended, she realized Nadi didn't plan on taking it down.

"You gotta be..." She murmured.

Then, without finishing her sentence, the Sith Lord jumped. She scraped against the side wall, grinding her metal fingers into it in order to slow her descent before reaching the bottom.

Well... That was fun.

Arris pried the next set of doors open, but they weren't alone in the archives. Heavy ionic fire unloaded into the empty shaft. Whoever was cleaning house was currently in the process of extracting archival data onto a holodisk, and wasn't too fond of the uninvited guests.

 

[Nadi]

Nadi hit the floor of the shaft a moment after Arris, the dull thud of her landing suppressed by her dampener. She shifted to one side as Arris wedged her metal digits into the door and began to pry, and winced as the hail of blue ion bolts surged into the shaft.

She wasn't sure how good Arris' ion shielding was, but any ion blast was going to have a hell of a time getting through Nadi's outer shell unless something else damaged it first. Though it didn't hurt to be a little cautious.

The instant there was a break in the fire she launched herself through the door above Arris at a diagonal, pushing off it with one foot to reverse direction mid-air. A few stray ion bolts caught her, but she ignored them and snatched the grenade they'd thrown out of the air to return it to sender.

By the time it went off, she was safely squirreled away around a corner of the small antechamber to the elevator shaft.

It turned out to be an ion grenade, and the entire barrage of weaponsfire ceased in the wake of its detonation. She could hear some of them frantically trying to clear and reset the weapons, while others simply dropped them and reached for guns that hadn't been active when the grenade went off.

<How the kark did they know to have ion weapons?>

Once again, her paranoia flared to life, painting the esteemed Mr. Navarro in a very unflattering light. Ion weapons generally weren't standard issue unless you were anticipating droids or cyborgs, and the fact that these mooks had been was... unsettling.

She darted a quick glance around her corner to find a tech still working on the data extraction, and seven of the.... guards? Agents? Kill squad? ...advancing on the little room and the elevator it held.

Arris Windrun | Grant Navarro​

 

[Arris Windrun]

Nadi
Down & Out
​

Arris didn't have any techy - or even smart - means of counteracting the ion weapons. Just the Force. But that was kind of a great divider at times, a filter that allowed certain people (like Arris) to make very stupid decisions and get away with them.

The cybernetic Sith Lord stepped out into the open, immediately hit by incoming fire. She spasmed as her cybernetics shorted and struggled, but the energy wouldn't obey conventional physics. No, she channeled it, turning her entire body into a makeshift capacitor, then charged into the room. She reached out to touch the first person she saw - a guard - and gave that fire back the moment she made contact. His body tore apart at the touch, leaving nothing but meat gravy and a pair of smoking boots in her wake.

She drew her pistol next, firing a shot into another thug's leg, then pivoted to expend a second round into a third's chest. The latter died; the former cursed as he tried to stand, but struggled less and less as blood kept gushing from the broken artery.

A fourth and fifth joined forces, charging Arris in something not unlike a clothesline attack with their firearms. She grabbed onto one of the guns, but the other smashed into her collarbone... or at least, where it approximately would be. But her internal structure was reinforced and armored. The attacker practically bounced off of her, earning some whiplash along the way. She yanked the gun she had grabbed free, using it to knock that man onto his ass, then opened fire into his face - point blank. The raw power was still great enough to burn him. Mister whiplash got back up, joined by another pair to turn their scuffle into a three vee one.

Nadi would have time to deal with the tech while Arris sparred with the others, using her pistol as a bludgeoning device.

 

[Nadi]

It wasn't difficult to slip past the armed soldiers, thanks largely to Arris' effective (if gory) distraction. The tech was fully engaged in their work despite the battle, and Nadi couldn't help but be a little impressed by their focus.

Ultimately, that didn't help them. A few brief seconds of compression on their carotid arteries left them insensible, and Nadi snatched their datapad before it hit the ground.

She scrolled through the data they'd gathered thus far, searching for any indicator of how much they'd grabbed. Getting the data out in a handheld drive would be much easier than lugging hundreds of pounds of paper.

It was then that the process hit a manual authorization prompt, requesting a password to continue.

<Kark.>

Her eyes fell closed as the reached for that place in her mind where she knew she would find her awareness of the tech around her, then from there pushed into the mainframe console itself.

The link was always uncomfortable, unfamiliar data and sensations flooding her mind, but this one was different. It felt... it felt like it was fighting her, and a data storage mainframe should not be able to do that. She pushed harder, mentally gritting her teeth as she strained to locate the code for the authorization prompt and remove it.

She found it a moment later and as she removed it, something moved in the mainframe data. Something that felt far too much like her to be a naturally occurring change in the code. She'd never encountered anything that moved like she did, ignoring the usual programmed pathways and shifting through data as it pleased.

She was tempted to go after it, try and find out what it was, but she'd done what she needed to and they had to get this data out. It was probably just a droid brain doing file management.

But it wasn't.

In the moment she withdrew, it latched on to her consciousness and lunged back through her connection to the mainframe, her mind flooding with hostile data that bulldozed through her cybernetics as it worked to shut her down.

Her last thought before she lost consciousness was that whoever had set this trap had known exactly how they would be connecting to the mainframe in the event of complications, and had...

Darkness.

Arris Windrun​

 

[Arris Windrun]

Nadi
​

Arris had been busy finishing off her friends. By the time it was done, Nadi was already out cold on the floor, but the technopath felt something was off when she spread her awareness over the rest of the mainframe.

The cybernetic Sith Lord had knelt beside the mercenary - was it a kindness? Difficult to say with the Sith. Unlikely, maybe, but Arris had a poor habit of being unusual, even for a freak.

"Shh," Arris said, placing her hand on the cyborg's chest.

The Force extended from her point of contact. It would fill every wire and circuit. Find every implant. Sift through all the data.

She meant to impart a piece of herself, something to stabilize the woman's condition and systemically hunt down and eliminate the hostile ones and zeroes. All the while, Arris grabbed the holodisk and hoisted the woman over her shoulder. They would be up and outside, secluded in an alley somewhere behind the building, when Arris finally tried to stir the woman awake.

"You there?"

 

[Nadi]

Consciousness returned only scarce moments later as her nerve package came back online and forced her awake. The first thing she became dimly aware of was that not only was she not alone in her own body, but there was more than one intruding intelligence.

She could feel the first as it burned its way through implants that set out almost immediately to repair themselves, fixing the damage it left in its wake. Whatever this thing was, it probably would have been a lot more successful had it gotten into someone that didn't have her capacity for self-repair. Though even her systems were nearly being outpaced as it learned more and more about how they interacted and worked together. Clearly, this was a very efficient cyborg-killer, so she appropriately resolved to name it Hostile-entity.

The second presence was far less violent, and Nadi would even have called it curious if anyone had asked. Curious was still invasive though, and she didn't particularly like the idea of any unknown entity digging through her systems.

She'd have to deal with both, but the one currently trying to kill her was a bit more pressing. She was about to launch her rapidly steadying consciousness at it when it also seemed to realize the second entity was here, and it lit up with something Nadi could only describe as recognition before abandoning its attack on her implants to lunge for the newcomer.

As much as an entity composed entirely of data can lunge, at any rate.

<What the kriff?>

Why would it abandon killing me for some random other...

<Oh... I wasn't the target.>

Whatever was happening in the world outside her body, she had a hard time believing that Arris had been taken down by violence, which meant she was probably the second entity and could connect to tech the same way (or a similar one) as Nadi could.

<So this thing was meant for her, and now it's found her.>

With a surge of effort, she launched her intellect at Arris-entity just ahead of Hostile-entity, using what little time she had to isolate the link from Arris-entity to Arris-body, then snap it closed just as Hostile-entity struck and began reducing what remained of Arris-entity to bits of constituent code.

The altercation gave her enough time to come up with a way to possibly contain Hostile-entity, and when it finished destroying Arris-entity she was ready for it.

Prodding it with her own attack got its attention and made it realize it wasn't going to be able to run amok unhindered anymore, and when it lunged again she guided it through the maze of tech within her body until it reached the piece she wanted.

Her currently inactive inhibitor chip.

<This had better karking work.>

Because if it didn't, she was probably just handing this thing control of her body.

Once it reached the chip, she focused her intellect on pushing it fully inside, then sealing away any remaining control connections to the rest of her body. If she missed even one, this would be a very long hiatus for her free will, but several seconds went by and nothing happened.

Then several more.

And it was a full minute before she was content that she'd succeeded and began pulling her focus out of her own body.

The sensations that greeted her were... unexpected. She was lying in the dark on cold duracrete, being gently shaken awake by an unyielding cybernetic hand.

"Holodisk..."

Her voice was hoarse, probably from her respirator implant getting burned out, but she was intelligible. She swallowed painfully before trying again.

"Did you get it?"

Arris Windrun | Grant Navarro​

 

[Arris Windrun]

Nadi
Down & Out​

Arris held up the holodisk. "Yeah, I got it." She shoved it back inside her jacket.

Footsteps drew her attention back towards the alley's entrance. Thankfully, they were just passersby. Civilians or workers on their way elsewhere.

"I haven't seen or heard from Grant since you went cold. So, we should probably head to the rally point on our own."

The Sith Lord stood back up and looked around again. Just in case. Couldn't be too sure if anyone was watching, or if their attack alerted reinforcements of any kind.

Then, she looked back at Nadi.

"Are you good to stand? Can you walk?"

She really didn't want to have to carry her again. Not that it was terribly hard... just... awkward.

Of course, through all of it, Arris remained entirely oblivious to what happened. Let alone that what had happened was meant for her. She figured an antivirus fed Nadi malware the moment she linked into the digital records. Something meant for a droid, maybe.

"Good work back there, by the way. Most slicers I've met are useless in a fight."