His boss grinned at him, "Precisely, and she fits the mould perfectly. Young, public school, highly augmented and with eyes that say she could as easily kill you as look at you. She also casually dropped information about me that I thought I had kept secret." The older man rubbed his wrist with his other hand, "I had been asking back home for a little help sealing this deal, and guess what she told me? The Night City government is very interested in the old Demon Eyes."
The younger executive started looking a little excited, too, now. Although that sounded like not a lot of intelligence, it was exactly what they needed right now and invaluable. Of course, you couldn't expect a government spook to share much more than that, but knowing that their potential client really did want to make a deal was the difference between a twenty and ten per cent profit margin, and that would quickly add up over the period of the contract, with all its support and maintenance elements. They might be looking at a serious bonus this time!
"It would be a coup if we could seal this deal right in Militech's backyard," the younger man said exuberantly.
The next morning we all had breakfast, and although Ruslan and Jean looked slightly hungover, it wasn't to the point where I felt I needed to intervene, although I made sure they hydrated themselves well during the meal.
After that, we went over the game plan one more time. I told them what we were trading and how much I was expecting to get, which caused them to grin before arriving at the conference room a little early. Although we were only renting it starting at thirteen hundred, they let us in about fifteen minutes early. We were all wearing very obvious mercenary-style clothing, albeit of a better quality than they normally wore. I sat at the end of one table, with Ruslan and Jean standing to either side of me, acting like obvious security in their cheap suits and Kiwi sitting to my side.
As I settled into my chair to wait, I casually used the hotel's intranet to check out of our room. Frowning, I noticed that the boys had each run up a charge of over three thousand Eurodollars. Well, I intentionally didn't look at the itemised receipt and just paid it. I would deduct most of that from their final pay, though it gave me an odd feeling that I couldn't identify.
Shrugging it off, I pulled out my mask from the bag I was carrying. I was wearing the same conservative dress that I had worn last night, but for the mask, I had selected something unusual for this world.
I was tempted to just grab a random Noh or shinobi mask that were all around Japantown, but instead, I had printed a white plague doctor's mask, which was not in the cultural vernacular at all, to the point that I had to design it myself on my CAD system. I was sure such a mask was in the histories, but unlike Earth Bet or Earth Aleph, it must have been only known to scholars here rather than basically everyone. It was white because the Biotechnica people were expecting to meet "Miss White" at this exchange.
"Woah, that looks weird, Miss White," Ruslan said as he took in my mask.
I nodded at him, "Thank you, Mr Orange." That caused him to scowl, as he wanted to be Mr Black, but I specifically had selected orange. Also, Jean had just stared at him and said that if anyone was going to be Mr Black, it was him, as he was at least actually black. Kiwi didn't like her name, Miss Pink, either, but she should have thought of that before she decided to grow up so boingy and feminine.
The Biotechnica contingent arrived on time, exactly. They had five people, which was one more person than was agreed upon, but I decided not to mention it. I wanted to seal the deal and didn't want to be confrontational from the start.
There were two obvious security guys who looked as big as Rus and Jean were, along with one guy that I was tentatively identifying as a technical expert, along with one man and woman that looked like managers or minders. I supposed that was acceptable; there could have been any number of reasons they needed five people instead of the four they agreed upon. It wasn't enough to make a big deal out of. One of the security guys carried a large nylon duffle bag, which was promising.
The male manager sat at my opposite at the other end of the table, with his security guys behind him and the other two sitting on either side of him. He nodded at me, "I take it you are Miss White, then?" He raised an eyebrow at the odd white mask I was wearing.
"Yes, Wakako has hired me as a subject matter expert in this exchange, but I'd prefer not to be identified and apologise for the discourtesy," I said in my fancy accent.
He inclined his head, "That's acceptable. We have the agreed-upon sum, four point one million. But only one half is in cash; the other half is in irrevocable digital currency."
I raised an eyebrow behind my mask. That wasn't the plan either, so I said mildly, "That isn't as agreed."
"Yes, we apologise about that. We had some issues arranging for so much untraceable cash on short notice," he simpered, spreading his hands as if to say, 'What can you do?'
I didn't believe that for a moment. Digital eurodollars were irrevocable, but they were also traceable. If I started spending these dollars, they could track who I was sending them to. Wakako could launder the money for me, giving me either untraceable digital currency or cash, but that would be another fee-I believed she charged ten per cent for this service, so this would end up costing me in real terms close to a hundred and seventy thousand dollars. That was more money than I had ever had.
Things weren't looking good for this transaction, but this was a small enough setback that it still made much more economic sense to go through with it than to back out now, and the Biotechnica man, who was not Wakako's contact, likely knew that. How annoying.
I stayed silent long enough to make him know I was considering departing or possibly consulting with Wakako digitally, staying still and staring at him from behind my mask. Finally, I said, "Very well. As stated in the agreement, we will need to verify the funds, and then I will give you the data shard that contains the information. Since you requested a subject matter expert, I have reviewed this information myself. Biotechnica indicated that this would be acceptable, and I will be available here for the next two hours if your chemist has any questions."
He nodded to the security guy, who stepped forward and set the duffle bag on the table, sliding it over almost all the way to our side of the conference table in one powerful shove. I nodded formally to my left, "Miss Pink if you would."
She nodded and pulled out a few sensors, opened the bag and started using them on the bundles of currency inside. She was not only checking for transmitters, although if Biotechnica was smart, any such devices would not be active until we left the building, but she was also using optical sensors and flipping through the stacks of currency, checking for sequential serial numbers.
If Biotechnica was a bank, it would have been theoretically plausible for them to track individual random serial numbers. They wouldn't be able to track them like digital currency, but they'd be able to identify the rough location the money was being spent as it entered the banking system. It usually took weeks or months, though, for a random bill to find its way into a bank, and sometimes they never did.
For these reasons, Wakako charged much less to launder physical notes than she did digital eurodollars. That was why I had included getting different bills from Wakako into the agreement, but I knew she would charge for the tumbling of the digital money. Speaking of which, I asked, "And the digital currency?"
He pulled out a small data shard from his breast pocket and said, "It's right here, but I'm afraid I can't let you have this until we verify the contents of the data. If I handed it to you, there would be nothing stopping you from immediately transferring to a random digital wallet in Kazakhstan."
I sighed and frowned again. What he was saying was true. All digital transfers were irrevocable. But so were transfers of data. I pulled out a similar data shard, "And I couldn't stop you from sending the data immediately back to your home office as soon as you have this, so I propose that we do a mutual exchange, then. But after Miss Pink verifies the notes."
He tilted his head to the side and paused as if considering before finally nodding and saying, "Acceptable." We sat there for a few minutes while Kiwi used some tools I had brought along to count and test the money. Finally, she zipped up the duffle bag and nodded at me. I duplicated the gesture at the Biotechnica suit, and he then handed the shard to one of the security guys behind him.
I did the same, handing it to Mr Orange, who nodded at me. The two security professionals met each other in the middle of the room and exchanged shards. Ruslan walked back to me and placed it in my hand.
I should have expected this situation, and if so, I would have brought with me a little air-gapped credshard tester. It was a small device about as big as a business card that you plugged in a shard containing funds, and it would display the amount contained within. It was a security device in case of viruses. It didn't notify you that there were viruses on the shard, just that the money was actually there. A glance at Kiwi, who winced, told me she didn't think to bring one, either.
Still, I had very good security. I triggered my Zetatech ICE to its highest security state, cutting and temporarily blocking all wireless connectivity. Then I casually inserted the shard into my datashard port and froze.
Immediately I was bombarded with messages and security alerts from my system about detected malware. My Zetatech system had mounted the datashard as an emulated drive on a fully virtual operating system and had detected malware attempting to auto-run. It wanted to know if I wanted to quarantine it or allow it to run in the sandbox. The latter was really never a good idea, but it would tell me if this malware was intended to harm me or not.
However, I already had a good guess that it was intended as a rootkit and tracking virus rather than something to burn me out. Plus, with a rootkit installed, they could always remotely load more lethal malware later if needed.
I wanted to sigh. This also wasn't a good sign. I didn't, thankfully, need to run the virus to verify that there was a preapproved digital transfer on the shard in addition to the hidden malware. All I had to do was input the desired wallet ID, and I could have the entire contents, which was two million and fifty thousand eurodollars. That was something, at least.
I used the funds to cryptographically sign the transaction, sending the funds to the public address to an empty wallet which was not located on my personal system but on the servers I used to host my modest net site. That was a little bit dangerous if I intended to keep the funds there for any length of time because, theoretically, that site could be hacked.
The wallets were among the data that I had heavily encrypted there, so it might be difficult for them to actually steal the funds, but a hacker could delete the data, and if so, over two million dollars would be gone into the æther forever. If I was smarter, I would have had a wallet that wasn't physically connected to any network, like on a different datashard that was in my drawer back home, but I hadn't thought of that.
There were some people and companies that made entirely physical and analogue digital wallets, despite how contradictory that sounded. For example, I had seen some with the digital code etched on a metal plate; they were intended to be placed in a safe or safety deposit box and basically acted as the digital equivalent of bearer bonds. You could decode the character etched on top of the plate and regenerate a digital wallet containing however much funds it had. These featured prominently as plot devices and MacGuffins in the espionage genre of BDs and films.
I finalised the transaction but did not post it to the public banking blockchain yet. Both because my network was down hard and I didn't have access to the net but more importantly because the Biotechnica people across from me would instantly be alerted, and we hadn't, actually, finalised our transaction either, so I wasn't entitled to run off with half the money. Still, I would be able to do so without using the data shard again, which was my intent.
I removed the shard from my data port and immediately triggered a full system bit-by-bit security inspection, just in case. I placed the shard in a small protective case and placed it in my backpack, zipping the small compartment I stored it in closed.
I didn't actually need the shard anymore, but I wanted to give the impression to the Biotechnica people that I did to be polite. I am sure they knew what I did, just as I am sure they would transfer the data I gave them back to their offices immediately as well, which was also against the rules of the exchange, but neither of us commented on it. It was the polite and expected way a Corpo created contingencies while pretending that we would never do such a thing. Ruslan "Trust but verify" was a Russian expression, but the average Corpo operated on the slightly different "Never trust, ever" idiom.
I had watched the manager hand the shard to the skinny man next to him, who produced a small laptop computer of all things and inserted it in. That would have been something I could have brought too, or hell, my phone. Many things could mount datashards. It made me want to chuckle because the fact that I hadn't thought to do so meant that I had really gone "native" in this world, utilising only my cybernetics like most people.
The technical expert said, "It looks correct and plausible, but I'll need to review this and possibly watch this video of it being synthesised." I had included everything, not holding anything back except the identity of the person performing the synthesis, me. I used AI tools to change the person's appearance and voice to an old lady's. Such vid modifications were easily detected, but they were lossy. They couldn't revert the old lady back to my likeness.
I watched their chemist review the material as my internal security sweep finished, finding no threat. The Biotechnica manager smiled affably at me now, "And now we wait, I suppose."
I nodded, "Could I offer you some refreshments? I can ring the Konpeki girls to bring some tea."
He gasped theatrically, "But this is the Azure Plaza, completely independent from Konpeki!" We all shared a knowing smile at that; even Kiwi snorted. Then he nodded, "Sure, that sounds nice. Gentlemen, you don't have to loom anymore if you'd like to take a seat."
