Gooood Morning New Phoenix! This is your favorite corporate approved pirate radio show, Rage of the Bottom Line! Today's going to be a scorcher, folks, averaging at one eighty three at its height with not a speck of cloud cover for miles! So make sure to stay in the Fog Layer if you are too poor to afford a Boyoba Hover Car.

  In other news, The Family's big yearly party is set to begin soon, so plenty of you thrill junkies can throw yourselves at any visiting Sams to try your luck. Who knows, you may be able to lick them before they vaporize you!

  -Morning intro from DJ NotaCorp, July 19th 2057

  Alarms are the worst. Alarms you can only turn off by solving a damn puzzle should only be given to murderers, politicians, or the criminally insane.

  Instead, I have to deal with Cody's shit idea for a prank as i flail in my bunk. One of those sliding block puzzles takes up my entire vision, and with each moved block, the alarm sound changes and get louder. Mercifully, it only takes me 6 moves to clear it as silence settles in.

  If I was better at meshwork than him, I would retaliate in kind. Unfortunately, he was the only one on our team with the augs necessary to enter the Mesh and mess with meatspace. I would have to beat him in that RTS game again later tonight instead. Thinking about it, the way I beat him last night might be the reason for his unreasonable prank.

  Sighing, I roll out of bed, hearing Cody chuckling from the bunk below mine. I glare at him, but all that is accomplished is his snickering gets a bit louder. I sigh and trudge to the bathroom before Jill finishes her morning stretches. If I am too slow, I will not be able to use it for an hour. She says her routine is more important than our discomfort. Not to mention that the only one of us strong enough to fight her over it won't because she has him wrapped around her finger.

  I glance at myself in the mirror screen. Average height, bit under weight, average looks, my tan was fading a bit, and my dark brown hair was a shaggy mess. The usually deep dark circles under my eyes had lightened considerably since I could actually get decent sleep lately.

  Finishing my business quickly, I get changed into my work assigned jump suit and make my way to the kitchen. Buddy, the 6’4 fridge of a human, has already started making food for the rest of us. It smells fantastic, synth plants and meat sizzling in oil. I connect to the appliances to see if we are low on ingredients that he likes to use and see we are indeed low on synth meat paste. I place an order and schedule a drone to do a pick up run later today for the big guy.

  Working for a corp is like gambling, just with the scales even more heavily tilted towards the House. The one my team works for is called Sunshine Optics LLC, a small local shell company that bigger fish use. Officially, we do survey work for infrastructure, pipelines, electrical wires, utilities and the like. What we actually do is full on corporate espionage and counter-espionage. Infiltration, data mining, extraction of experimental materials and prototypes, and minor sabotage to infrastructure and supply lines.

  What sets us apart from other groups like us is two things. First, we have all been working in this field for eight years without a single death, basically a miracle in this line of work. Second, we are all under the age twenty, and thus makes us the youngest group in our field. This also means the opposition underestimates us constantly, which has allowed us to escape from or overturn many botched jobs.

  This also means our higher ups underestimate us constantly. And this has allowed Cody to basically jailbreak every piece of tech we have, breaking past corporate censorship and spoofing monitoring programs. This matters because Roger, our team leader, is currently watching four different screens with various news programs, stock profiles, gambling sites, and tech forums at the same time. A very important part of recon for our work, he swears. And often he finds and shares possible motives for the jobs we are given, or even places to fence any extra goods we recover while on the job.

  Once everyone gathers at the dorm table for breakfast, Buddy passes out his attempt at a fancy breakfast he saw on an AI cooking show the other day. I recognize the shape of an omelet, but the eggs are replaced with kelp paste. Everyone eats quickly, the food nutritious and actually tasting good due to Buddy’s secret stash of salt and pepper. Contraband per company policy, but a felony we are more than willing to risk.

  “Alright, team,” Roger begins once everyone's plates are cleaned, his voice a dulcet tone that commands our attention, “We received a request from the higher ups. Details are in your inboxes. Read up and gear up, we leave in 30.”

  I flick through menus and open the flagged message.

  Client: Humboldt Technical College

  Objective: electrical survey and maintenance

  Details: Sector 11-33B received a shipment of updated cables for more efficient power transfer. Survey the Chem lab for optimal installation and proceed with install. Client demands same day installation. Special install tools will be provided.

  Inventory list.doc

  I take a deep breath, more annoyed than anything. The last four jobs we had revolved around this College, which in itself is weird. We don't normally do jobs so close to each other in case something goes wrong. Yet, each time we infiltrated, things went well. No one looked too deeply into Jill’s disguise, looked twice at my drones patrolling the skies around the megabuilding the college sits in, or the hallways of the college itself, nor the van we use to move everything and everyone.

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  This time, we had to sneak into a lab and install another device with new tools provided by the company. The lab is pretty deep into campus, where there are more cameras, so the attached file shows we will be getting better Scout drones as well as a personal surveillance manipulator. The same black box item will also be provided.

  “Hey, Roger, what the hell is going on?” Cody asks, flipping his dirty blond bangs out of his eyes, “Two jobs in the same building in a row, I can understand, even if it's odd. Five in a row on the same floor of a megabuilding is too much. Something big is going down, and espionage doesn't cover it.”

  His paranoia was understandable, as we all have had the same thoughts. To be fair, each job was simple. Sneak in, make our way to a different part of the building, a lab, storage room, or a classroom, and install a chip into a breaker or other piece of tech, then leave. Super easy, no risk, and it even pays above average for our work. The only jobs that pay like that are ones where we have to risk life and limb to extract core secrets from heavily secure facilities.

  “He's right, Roger. Do you have any idea what they might want from a college? Especially one so unsecure?” I ask. I rub my eyes, my brain a bit foggy still from the gaming session last night.

  He shakes his head, “Nothing I can find online, officially or otherwise. Floors above and below are pure residential, and the College is only rated for mid level corporate training, so no exotic materials or projects. From Cody’s bugs, nothing major on any of the schedules either. Jill, anything you might have noticed inside?”

  Jill shakes her head, her pitch black hair waving, “Staff and students are acting normal, no tension or unease in their postures, speech patterns, or biorhythms. Only place I haven't been is the staff only areas, but we have to use a service hallway to access the lab in question this time. Professor Oblique’s personal lab, if the blueprints are accurate.”

  We sit in silence for a minute, digesting everything for a bit. Buddy claps his hands softly to get our attention. “We can think more on the way over.” His voice deep, yet soft for someone his size, ”Plates in the sink, go bags strapped and ready to go.”

  With his prompting, we move with coordinated precision, making Haste towards the van. I wonder what the drone will be this time.

  Making our way through the sterile corridors between our dorm room and the garage, the dim lights above flickering. As Roger opens the garage door, a Moth flutters in, batting around his face. He panics a bit, we all hold in a laugh. Well, everyone but me. I know moths are rare on Earth right now, let alone New Phoenix in the height of summer. Plus, the garage is hermetically sealed, so how did that Moth get in.

  I have a really bad feeling about today.

  The van is a simple, dirty grey utility hover van with the Company Logo on it, a coiled fiber optic cable under a simple eye. The van itself is 8 feet wide and 18 feet long, and with a tall enough cabin to allow Buddy to stand straight, with his hair brushing against the ceiling.

  Opening the back of the van, we see a new box sitting on the floor. Solid dark gray, hard plastic with two heavy duty clasps. There is an image of an ant on its top. The symbol that represents me in our team.

  Focusing on the box helps calm my anxiety from the Moth earlier. We pile in the van, Roger and Jill at the front, Buddy, Cody, and I strapped in the back with a bunch of electronic infiltration equiptment. Picking up the box, a bit surprised at how heavy it is. I pull a connection wire from the front of it and connect to it with my augs.

  I feel an intense wave of vertigo before the hover van even takes off, as instructions download into my implants. It takes a few minutes for my mind and stomach to settle, as I comprehend what new drone the company is letting me use.

  “Type 15 S.R.M hive. Scanning, Recon, Mapping, a swarm of microbots an inch wide. Virtually silent with multi spectrum sensors and minor active camo.” I say aloud, opening the box. Inside is 15 pitch black orbs with a tablet screen on the lid, “Full connection to my augs with accompanying control and analytical software. Cody, hook in to my feed so you can help me make sense of the new info.”

  He gives me a small glare at the order, but I am focused too heavily on the feed on new data so I don't notice. Infrared, thermal, EMF, olfactory? Cody connects to my augs and the burden is heavily lessened.

  “What the hell is in there that we need this much information to avoid?” Cody asks.

  No one has an answer.

  We arrived within an hour due to traffic, parking in the garage 2 floors down from the college, which is on the 56th floor. As Jill steps out, the New Phoenix heat blasts in through the door, reminding me why pedestrian traffic is basically a slow suicide in this day and age. I glance at the temp reading from the S.R.M.s. A balmy 176 degrees Fahrenheit. I send the orbs after Jill, spreading around her while activating the camo feature.

  It was neat to see the drones shimmer like heat haze, then vanish from sight. Well, the non drone sight. They were still very visible to each other.

  It takes her another thirty minutes to make it to the college at a leisurely pace since she has to take the stairs. The elevator had 4 cameras inside and logged who took it, while the stairs only had 1 and only logged how many people took the stairs. And that one camera Cody already cracked the first time around. Same with the keypad on the stairway doors.

  Once more, Jill blends in seamlessly with the various students, her heavy bio-mods making her pass for someone in the twenties, instead of the eighteen year old she was. She chats her way through the guards, any teachers or nosy students interrupting her, and then lifts an ID off an unaware janitor. All the while, the orbs follow close behind, near the ceiling of the hallway.

  Once classes begin, Jill slips into a staff only hallway using the ID, the S.R.M taking the lead now.

  “Making good time, Roger.” Cody says, “No surprises yet,”

  Roger nods, he glances towards Buddy, who has suited up in his “Panic" gear, a set of heavy ballistic armor that adds to his bulk, and a heavy collapsible batton.

  “Wait a moment,” I say. Everyone pauses, even Jill, “I'm picking something up from my … olfactory sensors. Something very foreign.”

  Jill scoffs, continuing towards the lab, ”You smell something weird? Through these baubles?” She arrives at the lab door.

  “Yes, it seems to be coming from the lab. Jill, please put on your mask before entering. These things don't have chemical analysts installed, but I don't recognize the smell. It might be a gas leak or a broken fume hood inside.”

  I can see her roll her eyes at my worries, but Jill complies. She pulls out from her jacket a rebreather mask and puts it on, then pulls opens the door. I send in the drones.

  Then I shout, “MODEL THREES, RUN!”