Chapter 34 - Decoys and the Data Centre (III)

There was a little weasel of a worker who clocked in after everyone else and clocked out before everyone else, but he stood out too much simply because everyone yelled at him while going in and going out.

Instead, Uari picked out a worker who came out of one of the alleys and joined the morning crowd headed into the data centre instead. Miserable filth covered the grunge of her uniform, indicating her status as a labourer in the data centre, working directly with the information.

Crucially, she greeted no one in the crowd, and in return, nobody sought her out. She remained immersed in whatever she was doing on her portable Interface even as she dripped fresh blood on the entry gates at the front of the building.

Uari stalked her on the evening of the second day as she left the Gejuth data centre. She did not notice he was following her, and he wondered pityingly if she'd ever gotten in trouble for not paying attention before, especially in an area so close to the slums. Once in a while, she'd snicker, giggle, or laugh to herself.

Must be entertaining, whatever she was watching or reading. No one paid any attention to her. To that extent, no one paid any attention to him.

Uari followed her home like the creepy middle-aged man he was, and then returned the next morning to trace her steps to work for two days just to make sure she took the same path.

She paused by a VendoStor every morning to pick up a packet of some dubious-looking, orangey-yellow chicken thing with rice. She wolfed it down standing up, eyes never leaving her portable Interface and sauce occasionally dripping onto her already-dirty clothes. Once she was done, she would then go down the exact same path as she took back to her apartment.

No surprises, no greetings, no variations.

On the night of the third day, he stole into her house and allowed a capsule of sedative to dissolve under her tongue before securing her thoroughly to her bed and gagging her, just in case. The capsule would keep her knocked out for several days.

He only needed one day. It was overkill, but he would rather be safe than sorry, and he would rather sacrifice her well-being than his life.

In the morning, when Caera informed him that her brother had been spotted in Wren, and the other decoys had also contacted him about being chased, and some decoys hadn't contacted him at all, Uari left the house as Kirvan Socte, Gejuth data centre worker and fujoshi extraordinaire.

Unwilling to deviate from her typical routine, he had browsed through her history and found a list of websites she regularly accessed as part of her routine. She followed several BL and 'danmei' novels religiously and commented on various platforms almost daily.

Uari forced himself to continue from where she last left off despite his general distaste for reading and hatred for romance genres. He persevered through three updates of surprisingly-engaging fantasy plotlines with little romance mentioned and one chapter of what the commenters called 'papapa' scenes before he arrived at the VendoStor and choked through the godawful chicken curry she'd gotten over the last two days.

For the rest of the trip, he continued immersing himself in additional updates and made appropriately heated remarks in the comment section below as he funnelled into the crowd heading towards the data centre's entry gates.

Focused on his swiping his screen and being generally inconspicuous, he allowed the lock sensor to prick at the skin layer he'd added on the fingertip of his clone. A drop of Kirvan Socte's blood, freshly extracted that morning and kept warm with his own body temperature, was dripped into the lock.

The gates opened.

Uari was in.

From here on out, he had no information. It would be up to him to follow everyone else who looked roughly like him: dirty clothes, heading towards the basement areas where blue-collar labour was likely to be carried out.

There were no windows in the massive basement halls. Uari marvelled at how dim everything seemed despite the incessantly obnoxious white lighting that permeated the room. Cubicles were stationed throughout, spaced uncomfortably close to each other, and luckily enough there was a shepherd coordinator yelling at people to fill cubicles as they came in.

Kirvan Socte followed the crowd and sat in between the people in front and behind her. She pretended to sigh heavily and put her portable Interface away. Mimicking the backbreaking posture he'd seen her take on seats, Uari turned the portable Interface on as the rest of the hall filled, until the stream slowed to a trickle and the latecomer from before finally skidded into the room as well.

He was banking on the fact that most corporate or government Interfaces heavily restricted access to what software could be accessed from their hardware. As soon as he signed on (once again, with more blood), two sole icons greeted him.

He selected both to open them, which caused two in-depth looking windows to pop up.

Out of the periphery of his eyes, Uari saw his left-side colleague yawn and prop himself up on one hand. His right-side colleague clicked away studiously, refusing to look at either side of him and fully concentrated on his work.

Alright. No hints from either one but no attention either. He began to focus on the Interface instead.

One window displayed a series of numbers, data, and sources that had come in from around the city. The other seemed to show the digestion software, requiring him to fill in the data and process it through the software. To test it out, he filled in the information from the first series listed on the information on the second window, filled the appropriate data to classify and process it, and then pressed the submit button.

The software accepted it. Pleased, Uari continued to sort through the rest of the data assigned to him, carefully reading content that was being sent through text between the citizens of Gejuth until, gratefully, he came across an unencrypted text between Valen and her landlord.

To anyone else, it would've been the typical conversation about bills. Uari, however, saw the name mentioned in the content of the conversation and captured the identity number of the Interface it had been sent from.

The second software had a function that he could use to search users. He plugged in the number and watched in gratification as his screen filled with chat histories from that specific user.