Insisted Suicide

Rebecca and Sasha were surprised to hear about their new gig, neither had thought they'd ever be involved in a death race, yet now they were being asked to win one? While Rebecca was excited about the prospect, Sasha was slightly more uncertain. She'd only just learned that bounty hunters were after them, yet now they were participating in something so public?

Her worries weren't eased even after Ori had explained how many Eddies were on the line, indeed, they just got worse. Knowing that she was going to be racing under the banner of a dozen or so Corpos that would have them killed should they lose wasn't exactly reassuring.

Ori had his own nerves of course, so he elected to get some proper practice with them. Setting up some basic targets in the desert and raced through the area as the girls shot at them. They were good, despite Sasha needing some extra time working on shooting moving targets.

His driving abilities also work, but even with that, he needed proper practice with the vehicle Quentin was going to send them. After all, Driving different cars was like shooting different weapons. You could be shit with one and excellent with another.

Unfortunately, there were apparently going to be delays with the vehicle, leaving the trio without the ability to practise for the first race. That wasn't to say they had nothing to do however, as was made clear just recently...

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Ori had just walked past the NCART station when his vision started slowly crackling, static buzzing in his ears as his stride slowed to a pause. Frowning, he taps the side of his head with his palm, thinking his interface was malfunctioning or something... But he quickly realised that wasn't the case when all of his vision became filled with black-and-white interference static...

[Greetings, Zombie. And goodbye.] - &%GJA$*!@

[Disconnecting Interface immediately: Flesh Adminsitrator] the nanites quickly say, pulling the plug and causing him to fall straight on his face.

*THWWWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMM!!*

Directly in front of him was a passing NCART on the track. And around him were panicking civilians on the platform, most staring at him with fear and consternation.

He quickly realised what'd just happened... Some fucker had hacked him and tried to have him throw himself in front of a train!

Growling, he climbs to his feet and storms out of the place, looking around for anyone who looked even somewhat suspicious. Obviously, he found no one, no Netrunner was dumb enough to stick around after a failed hack after all.

He pulls out his holophone since he was unable to use his interface and quickly calls Sasha, telling her about the situation and she was just as surprised as he is. He has the nanites restore his Interface and allows her to jack in, hoping she could identify who it was by any traces they might've left.

This, too, failed. Since the hack had been performed quite close to him, there were almost no identifying marks left, as you might find from a long-distance one. Of course, this could be ignored if the runner knew what they were doing, but someone like that wouldn't need to lower themselves to assassinating simple mercs since most Corpos would pay their body parts to have them.

He heads to Lizzie's Bar, gets a change of clothes to make sure he wasn't being followed, and then storms to Sasha's place. There, he finds her in her 'spare' bedroom, dumping ice into a large bathtub with a shit ton of wires sprawled on the ground, connecting to the walls and electronics.

"Huh, never knew you had a setup like this..." Ori admits, feeling his adrenaline at almost getting mulched by a train fade.

"I try not to use it... The energy costs are stupid, and refilling it with ice is annoying." she states.

"Can't you just get a Netrunner suit?"

"The cheap ones need a coolant system connected to them, and the good ones cost more than most borgs spend on Cyberware..." she retorts before shaking her head, "Think this is one of the bounty hunters?"

Ori shrugs, "Dunno, I heard Netrunner are supposed to be rare in this biz, ignoring you, Kiwi, and Lucy."

"Well, not rare enough it seems... Erm, could you..." she gestures for him to turn around, her brow furrowed.

He nods gingerly and forces himself not to look as he hears her unzip her clothes and drop into the ice bath.

"A-alright." she stutters out with a shiver, and jacks into the servers. "You said this happened at Ellison?"

He sits next to her and nods, trying to stop himself from peeking through the ice at her body... He was sixteen, girlfriend or not, he was still a horny bastard. "Yeah, anything you can do?"

"I'll check the cams, the runner should've been quite close to you to get a hack like that. The recordings should have something." she states, opening up a holoscreen for Ori to watch her progress.

He observes as she rewinds the footage until he came into view. "Damn, he's hot." Ori can't help but joke, prompting a chuckle from Sasha.

"Concentrate." she orders, starting the recording in real-time, watching him stroll down the street like a meerkat that knew a hawk was gunning for him...

The street was crowded with hundreds of people, making it almost impossible to pick someone apart from the crowd... Fortunately, the thing that most mercs got to ease their lives also aided the duo in this task.

There were a number of blurry faces outside of Ori's, some looked to be just regular Corpo's, business owners, some were obviously less scrupulous judging by the bulges of weapons on their hips. But after ten minutes of micro analysing the scene, they'd picked out around three people who could be the assassin.

One white guy in a jacket with slight Tyger Claw colourings who'd been walking a couple meters ahead of Ori at the time.

A black woman who'd been on the opposite side of the street.

And finally, someone with their hood up wearing gloves and anything else that might identify their ethnicity or build...