Sing'n in Binary: 32

“Where?” Aria asks, listening to Noah’s increasingly incoherent responses with half an ear as plans form and are just as quickly discarded. 

Already scanning through her debtor toolkit, she finds to her horror that those skills aren't designed for finding someone at speed.

Meaning she’s going to have to improvise a solution quickly.

Extraneous thoughts drop as every available resource is devoted to solving the problem.

Despite its limited usefulness, her work has one piece of good advice: the need for data to find a mark.

Reaching out and grabbing the connection between her and Noah, she zips across the temporary shortcut through the net and breaches his deck. The tiny hesitation discarded with the fact that there’s no time to get permission, there’s a life at stake! 

Every fraction of a second spent bypassing the ICE weighs on her mind as her slowness –her weakness– ticks the probability of saving a life ever lower.

Finally getting through half a second later she scans the Admin’s neuralware as quickly as she can without causing thermal damage. 

Another quarter second passes before she locates the last call, dropped five minutes ago. Alongside it the portrait of her target, the smiling face named ‘Bg-bro’ in the contact info.

Sending a ping to the Net address gives no return, meaning his neuralware’s offline right now. 

She can't think about what that means, wont think about what it means. Instead tracing the dropped call and finding the last location pinged before he went offline. 

Fourth street. Probable search area eighth mile diameter from that point. 

Scanning though everything else in his deck, she finds no more useful information and jumps across the call back home. In that time his nominally coherent relaying of information has devolved into panicked sobs and regrets.

She tunes him out further as he uses his brother’s name in the past tense.

No one’s getting kil- stole- kidnapped here! 

Whatever it takes.

Rushing towards her netport and sending out preliminary pings, Aria stutters, trying to frantically sort through the seemingly infinite amount of data that floods back. 

With the search area being a physical place instead of a on the net, there’s an impossible amount of connections to sort. Without a reference point she’d have to scan and process the entire net to find the systems that might have information she needs. 

A project like that takes days, even with significantly larger systems than her.

Unless she figures out some way to do that without some kind of anchor everything else is a non-starter.

Plus, what happens when she finds her target? Hack the Scavs? Sure, do that, what then? They’ve still got him, and her research on apartment security has shown a police response time best measured in hours.

Scanning for alternatives, Aria frantically tries to think her way around a terrible truth.

This isn't going to work. 

Coming to a stop as despair sets in, she shakes it off and firms her resolve to find another solution. Muting the incoherent sobbing from one of the two connections, she closes her eyes to thin-

Two calls.

Slamming her eyes open again, Aria unmutes her call with Solei directly, bypassing the metaphor of physical action.

“Sol! I need your help.” She yells in a panicked focus.

There's a half a second of garbled half words.

“I- Sure? Like I said I can gi-” She stutters out, still on the conversation from a minute ago.

“No! I mean like right now.” Aria grabs the connection and flies across again, having an even easier time bypassing her friend's security.

There’s no time.

“Wha- the hell!” Solei yelps as Aria piggybacks off her neuralware, settling in she sends out pings to every system surrounding her, using externals which have finally finished booting to help in breaching everything in the surrounding area as fast as possible. 

That speed did necessitate some sloppiness, she considers as lights flicker and electronics chirp and complain.

But she needs information, building location, layout, apartment number, and in the span of a few moments she has it.

The apartment that stutters into view from the cameras in every device is… messy. Boxes of takeout strewn about and fighting for position with clothes and unopened junk mail. The quite pretty human face of her friend that loads in is almost incongruous. 

But there's not enough time to be thinking about that!

Surprising her friend further, Aria grabs her eyes and appears in a blur of triangles, causing Solei to jump back, almost falling over.

“How-?!”

“Hurry! He’s hurt!”

Solei to her credit, after a moment of surprised shock, takes one look at her friend’s face and gives a single nod.

“I’ll need to put on shoe-”

“Fine! Thank you! Go!”

Flipping her attention again Aria unmutes the Admin still incoherent. But he’s gotten quieter, despondent.

Defeated.

“I’ll handle it, it’ll be alright.” Aria breathes.

She promises.

Hanging up, she uses the next few moments as Solei gets ready to implant some basic infrastructure into her neuralware in order to make this temporary piggyback as efficient as possible. Pulling up system specs to figure out how hard she can push the hardware without hurting her, Aria notes a currently inactive rootkit virus infecting her neuralware!

She wasn't even aware humans could get a rootkit.

Whatever it is, it’s got everything compromised; from memory, to higher brain function, even autonomic systems, everything.

Thankfully it’s currently inactive.

Quarantining the malicious system, Aria makes a note to warn her friend when this is over.

Completing her installation takes about three seconds then, blinking her avatar, she scans through the twenty six cameras in the apartment for wherever Solei went.

She’s not even put on one shoe yet!

Teleporting herself across the render and talking over the startled swearing, Aria tries to impress upon her friend the importance of speed!

“Hurr-!”

“Jesus choom! Mute! Going fast as I can!”

After a moment of panicked silence watching her human friend slowly get ready to leave, Aria disappears from the render again, working to minimize travel time after Solei’s ready. 

Breaching the elevator and calling it up to their floor. She routes the most efficient path from where they are to the center of the search area.

Walking?

Thirty five minutes. Unacceptable.

Routes with public transit?

Forty eight.

Paid transit?

Scanning through options she finds eighty two taxi services servicing the required area. Sorting through reviews, she filters by keywords like speed and reliability, then screens out the bot reviews. Leaving only one clear winner.

Sending a request packet to Delamain taxi services directly, she receives a satisfactorily prompt response, claiming a cab will be arriving at the south entrance of Solei’s building in two minutes five seconds.

Sending the request for journey ETA, there’s a slightly longer pause before she receives a rather complicated formula calculating the route time.

Rearranging the formula to be more easily computed and plugging in the given variables, she iterates the equation a few times and arrives at six minutes four seconds with a thirteen second margin for error.

Acceptable.

Sending back a confirmation, she closes out the connection.

It’s been fifteen seconds. Solei’s finally got shoes on. Shrugging on a jacket she reaches into a cabinet and pulls out something no camera can see, turning back to where Aria disappeared she holds out a green bag with a white cross.

“You think I need to bring this?” She asks before blinking as a blue line appears on the floor in her render.

“Ye- N- I don't know! Hurry! Follow the line!” Aria shouts as she appears next to the door, beckoning her over.

Solei glares at the line, then Aria as she starts speed walking to follow it out of her apartment.

“This had better be legit.” She mutters. “If I'm late for work because some gonk blitzed himself mute I’m not gonna be happy.”

As she approaches the door Aria buzzes it to unlock before her friend can stop to do it herself, at which she hesitates for a moment but doesn't comment. But picks up the pace as every fire/security door to the central elevator bank does the same.

However, as the elevator down to the south entrance opens on her approach and begins moving down before the doors can even close, she stumbles and looks almost spooked as the concrete wall of the elevator shaft disappears behind the automatic doors.

Puffing with exertion at the short jog, she glances around the empty elevator until her eyes lock to the only camera, then frowning up at it.

“I wasn't going to say anything choombata.” She says, gesturing at the blue line on the floor. “But what the fuck?”

Aria looks over from the camera feeds she just grabbed from the south entrance. Guiltily, she starts building a limited 3d environment using just three cameras of her eyes and the elevator ceiling.

“I- I know it’s wrong to break into all thi-”

“Wh- No? How?” She coughs, flat footed. “This is like… and you’re…” 

Aria appears as the elevator gives a rattle, looking over with a twitch Solei gestures her up and down. At this, Aria nods.

She knows she doesn't seem the type to break the law, but her friend isnt working with complete information.

“I know. But this is important.”

Solei tucks the green first aid kit under her arm and stares at her with an expression usually exclusive to Jinx, like she’s looking for something.

Whatever it is she’s searching for, it’s not clear whether she finds it, closing her eyes after a long moment and rubbing her temples with a groan.

“Fine. Fucking. Preem.” She mutters, taking a deep breath as the doors open on the ground floor and the blue line blips out to the exit.

Stepping out, she slows down as she sees the start pulling up towards their position, getting as far as the cap door before she stops as it automatically opens.

“I want some deets choom. The fuck am I even going?”

Does she not understand the urgency here?

“Fourth street, get in! Someone’s life is in danger!” 

There’s another tiny hesitation before Solei takes a deep breath and enters the cab, the door automatically pulling closed behind her.

“I’ll tell you on the way!”

Breaching the cap security to access the camera she-

Cant?

Blinking as the apartment cameras disconnect with distance, Aria directs her full attention to the security that just snubbed her. Partly because this is the first piece of ICE that’s completely no-sold her since she arrived at Night City. Meaning she needs to find a way in before she has to deal with this problem again but with a time crunch.

But… if she wants to be completely honest, also a great deal of curiosity on how this cab managed it.

She didn't trigger any countermeasures. But the normally simple process of finding an accessible port just… didn't.

After a moment she pokes harder, trying to gently brute force what’s normally not even the first step. Carefully watching for the system to respond.

With some more careful prodding at this deceptively interesting puzzle, plus a little bit of lateral thinking, she manages to get in. Revealing the raw camera data being sent further into an inscrutable mess of security.

Some part of her wants to dig deeper, to solve this strange puzzle. 

If she’d had more time. 

But the route ETA says five minutes and she’s got what she needs. So, setting up a basic self deleting siphon for the camera feed, she makes her exit.

A new camera feed revealing a very irritated Solei.

Who's also not wearing a seatbelt.

“Deets. Now.”

---

A/N: It's weird that I'm writing something then going back to edit something so long ago story wise. Especially with this tonal shift from chill and slightly melancholy to flurried urgency.

But I am noticing it's a lot easier to see errors in my own work with the distance of a backlog! Hooray for cognitive dissonance!

Hope you all enjoy!

Ta-ta All!