Chapter 14 - Easy Money
Discarded metal
Chapter 14 - Easy Money
"Who doesn't love easy money?"
Pulse rides his back through the commons.
It's the morning and the streets are as busy as a normal day, his bike blazes through the residential areas and gets out to a wider road that resembles a highway.
Highways in New Paris circle the city with exits connecting only the commons, no exits go to the corporate districts. The highways lead outside of the city and connects to other cities, the areas between cities are mostly used by the corporates as factory grounds.
A long time ago, farms could still be found outside of the cities but now they gave space for factories, some producing food, some producing techs, etc…
Pulse's bike accelerates when he enters the highway, the traffic isn't very heavy, lots of trucks and transporters, few personal vehicles. Common people don't venture much outside of the cities ground.
He arrives at a big guarded gate that indicates the limits of the city, several automated sentry guns are scanning the areas around the gate. Pulse stops his bike at the gate and gets scanned. A guard signals him to keep going and Pulse passes through the gate.
The background changes and looks more industrialized with several factories close to each others, Big corporations' logos can be seen on billboards. The industrial park is huge and seems to be extending in the horizon.
Pulse checks his bike's front panel where a map and GPS markers are displayed.
"No way that I hit one of the big ones…" He thinks to himself as he continues on the highway.
The sun beats down on him relentlessly, casting long shadows across the concrete and metal structures that surround him. The air is thick with the smell of pollution and decay, and Pulse can taste the grime in his mouth as he breathes. Big corpos factories are well maintained and heavy guarded.
His bike zaps through the well maintained areas, slowly the background is changing into a more quiet environment, smaller corpos factories, almost unheard names.
He exits the highway and rides through a complex of buildings with very light security guarding too many buildings for the number of guards present in the area. He does a quick drive through and nobody seems to care about him.
Even the buildings themselves seems to be beaten down by time, workers can still be seen going on with their activities on the factory ground.
Pulse passes by a small dinner where few people can be seen inside.
"Ok, this seems to be a good place to try out this daemon." He thinks as he slows down and stops behind one of the factory's buildings.
The alleyway is completely empty, the ground looks beaten down and littered with trash, indicating that probably nobody cares about this area.
He dismounts from his bike and starts to look around, he notices a metallic ladder on the wall that looks like a fire exit. He starts running toward it and jumps to catch it, with both hands catching the bottom of the ladder, he quickly pulls himself up and starts climbing.
He reaches a metallic platform with stairs allowing him to go up easily. He can see few windows with empty rooms. He keeps going up until he reaches the rooftop of the building.
The rooftop is pretty bare with several big ventilation units all connected to a pole with a big controller box on it.
"That's my way in…" Pulse thinks as he slowly gets closer, checking around for anything that might see him.
He reaches the box and opens it to uncover a control panel with slots and a small screen on it. He quickly pulls the cable from behind his ear and slots in, his vision blurs for a split second, when it clears up, he can see the entire network overlapping the real world on his visual implants.
His connection gives him access to the entire factory ground, just few nodes seem to have light security protocols.
"It's perfect… no connection with the outside world…" He thinks to himself as he slots in the shard with the daemon on it.
He sees the daemon invades the entire structure of the network in real time, taking over the security nodes much faster than any hackers he knows and without triggering any alarms.
"That shit is dope…" He thinks with excitement and adrenaline coursing through his veins.
Once the daemon took over the entire network, it starts siphoning all the credits it can find within the network and transfers them to Pulse. He watches as the credits flows, the number keeps going up, now reaching well over 50k.
"That's really easy money… That bloody AI didn't lie… Shit… What's wrong with me… I start trusting it…" His mind keeps racing as fast as the numbers are going up.
100K … 150K… 200K… 250K… and the siphon keeps going strong and fast. Thoughts of what it could accomplish on a bigger network makes him even more excited.
"Could get millions easily…" He thinks.
500K… Pulse decides to unplug as the numbers are slowing down drastically, indicating that the credits within the network are probably almost all siphoned already.
He stashes the shard inside his jacket and starts walking slowly back to the ledge where he climbed from.
"Hey! The fuck you are doing here?" A voice comes from the other side of the rooftop.
Pulse quickly turns around and sees a guard standing with his gun pointed in his direction.
"Damn… " He says as he puts his hands up in the air.
The guard starts walking toward him slowly, Pulse quickly take a look at the ledge and jumps over it without thinking. As he falls down, he manages to grab the metallic ladder but it goes down with him, barely stopping his fall.
As soon as he lands, he attempts to roll onto the ground to absorb the impact, but unfortunately, he dislocates his shoulder with an excruciating scream that resonates in the alleyway.
The guard appears on the ledge, sending an adrenaline rush through Pulse's body, using the rush, he stands up and runs to his motorbike. The guard takes few shots that end up into the wall. Pulse quickly starts his bike and zaps through the alleyway.
The pain in his shoulder is spiking, he puts his bike in autopilot mode, he lays down on it while it zaps through the small streets and gets back to the highway.
"Shit… It was almost perfect…" He says as he reaches for the compartment on the side of his bike.
He grabs an airhypo in the compartment, aims it to his neck and pushes the top of it. It injects him with a pain killer that will allow him to stand few hours. He throws the empty airhypo and stands straight on the bike while deactivating the autopilot.
He throttles back to the guarded gates of the city limits, slowing down to get scanned again. The guard let him pass like nothing happened at all. Pulse nods and passes through the gates.
He rides full speed on the highway and gets the closest exits to get to the electronic shop as fast as he can. He knows that the painkiller will wear off eventually and he better be back before it happens.
He zaps through the streets of the commons, the usual activities can be seen in the background, he barely pays attention as the pain starts to wake up in his shoulder.
"Damn… Not so soon…" He thinks.
He arrives to the parking lot of the electronic shop and dismounts from his bike quickly, holding his shoulder with his other hand.
Gloria is alerted by the members of her crew standing outside the shop, she comes out quickly and sees Pulse holding his shoulder.
"Shit! What happened?" She says as she rushes toward him.
"Just a small accident… Slowly, please." He says as she tries to help him walk back inside the shop.
"It was supposed to be an easy hit! How the hell did you get hurt?" She says angrily.
"Calm down! It's just a dislocated shoulder… I have half a million credits!" He says as he starts laughing hysterically.
Gloria stops walking and looks at him in shock.
"Half what?" She asks with her eyes opened big, looking straight at him.
"Half a bloody million!" He says as he faces her, still laughing.
Without saying a word, she jumps on him and hugs him tight, causing pain in his shoulder.
"Haaaa! Damn! G! My shoulder!" He shouts between laughs and screams of pain.
She gets him inside and helps him to sit on the long sofa in the bar area of the shop. One of their crew member checks him out and gets ready to put his shoulder back in place.
"You ready? It's going to hurt a bit." He says.
Before Pulse can answer, the crew member pulls on his shoulder, putting it back in place.
Pulse let out a loud scream that slowly turns into laughter.
"Half a million!" He repeats over and over again.
Everybody starts to follow him and it becomes a sort of chanting in the shop.
After a few minutes of cheering and chanting, they all starts to calm down.
"Tell us everything, Pulse." Gloria says.
"Like the AI said, it was super easy, I located a closed network in the industrial area with very light security, I launched the daemon and watched as the numbers went up. It quickly went up to 500K and started to slow down, so I decided to unplug. When I was almost at the ledge, a guard saw me, I jumped over the ledge and slowed my fall with the ladder I came up with. Didn't do what I was thinking it will and I crash landed." He laughs as he says the last part.
"The guard started shooting at me from the ledge, he wasn't a good shot, lucky me. I got to my bike and got the hell out of there as fast as I could. No alarms or anything, they probably didn't figure out what happened yet." He continues.
"Syntex was right…" He finishes.
"So now we call it by its name?" Gloria asks, teasing him.
"You are welcome." The voice of Syntex comes out of the speakers.
Gloria stands up and walks to the desk with the face of Syntex on the holoscreen.
"We need to talk upgrades. Make a list of what you need…" Gloria says while looking straight at Syntex.
"Did I earn your trust, Gloria?" Syntex asks.
Gloria looks at Pulse still sitting on the sofa, he nods at her and she turns back to face Syntex.
"Let's say we are one step toward it, you did good to us and it's our turn to do good to you." She answers.
"You won't regret it." Syntex says as his face disappears from the screen and a list appears instead.
Gloria stands up and signals one of her crew to take care of it. She goes back to sit with Pulse.
"Pulse, what do you think about managing the crew's funds from now on?" She asks him.
"Sure, G, but we need to be careful, we can't grow too fast." He replies.
"I know I'm impulsive, I trust you to keep me grounded." She admits.
"What? The great GForce is admitting a weakness? Have I died?" He asks ironically.
She punches his shoulder.
"Don't push your luck!" She shouts at him.
Everybody starts laughing, thinking this is all a joke, but today Gloria realizes her weakness and reached out for the first time in her life. Pulse knows it, he can read her loud and clear. It sends a wave of worries in his mind.
"Is she getting soft? We need her strong… Her impulses are what took us here…" He thinks, still smiling to hide his worries.
The person who checked the list given by Syntex, comes to Pulse and tells him about the upgrades needed. Pulse looks at Gloria and she nods in approval, sending some crew members outside to go shopping.
The rest of the day passed fast and gave space to the night.
BinaryGhosts celebrated their victory, getting one step closer to trust the machine.
Syntex kept silent, who knows what went through its mind…
Does it even have a "mind"…