Maniac’s Mayhem: A guide to being a corporate slave

Well, that wasn’t of much use, I think to myself while sitting down on the couch of the living room. The person who asked for the pictures was some random middle-aged white man with brown hair. Only the most common type of person, and they all look alike as well. As for the money, well, let's say that I am working on it, but it is a mess of statements and money flow that makes it look like an entire jungle of bullshit. Then again, the name sounds so familiar, but I can’t quite place where I have heard it before. When I do a quick search through all my documents, it shows no results.

“How odd,” I say, more to myself than to anyone around.

“What is odd?” Anika asks.

“The name of the shell company,” I say in frustration. “I could swear that I have seen it before, but I have no clue where.”

“Does it matter?” she says, looking confused.

“Uhm, not really. The guy is on camera footage leaving the building, so we just have to follow the trail, mostly,” I say, still annoyed.

I set up some algorithms that can track and follow this guy on the cameras. And they say that surveillance only helps corpos. Wait… never mind… in the meantime Anika, is… cleaning?

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Isn’t it obvious? I am cleaning. Why don’t you get off your lazy butt so we get this done sooner?”

“Yes, Mother, but didn’t we ask for a cleanup crew so that we don’t have to do the cleaning ourselves?”

“Well, the trick to make them show up fast for you is to give them as little work as possible for a good price. And I am not your mother. You would not be such a brat if I was.”

“Hey! Don’t insult my mother!" I shout out angrily.

“Sorry, that was low of me. Where is she anyway? I don’t think I have heard of you mentioning her?”

“She is dead, killed by New Hopes acquisition squad when I was indentured.” I say, all emotion leaving my body.

She turns away from me. “I am so sorry. That is… well… you know I am a mom, right? If you ever need something, just ask.”

That catches me completely off guard. What does she mean? We are not even close. “What, why?” I say, in my confusion.

“I know I can’t be a replacement for her, but at least I can give you some love and guidance. I feel like you are severely lacking that at this point.”

“I see, but why would you do such a thing?” I say, still trying to wrap my head around the concept.

“I don’t know, atonement or something, I feel sorry for you. This should not have happened, so I will take responsibility.” She says, determination in her voice.

“Well, thank you, but you don’t have to. I made sure the culprits paid already.”

“Giving them weird ads is not really payback, I would say,” she says, giving me a contemplative look.

“Ooh, no, none of that. You know, we sometimes get to send out people to possible threats. Well I made sure to send those guys out to the most dangerous one, slightly understaffed. They're all dead now.”

“Efficient. Well think about it, okay, you’re always welcome.” she says, giving me a smile.

“Sure, anyway, let's get back to work. The algorithm pinged a problem,” I say, trying to change the topic.

I open a screen on the living room TV” This is our guy.” I say, while pulling up an image of a guy in some kind of long dark green raincoat with the hood completely pulled up.

His face is covered in one of those blue surgeon masks. The cameras follow him along the streets until he comes to one of those overhanging marketplace-like things. Places where you can find all kinds of interesting stuff for cheap, the question usually being if it will hold up or even work in the first place.

The problem with these areas is that, because some of the goods are not exactly legal, there is no camera coverage inside. The only thing we can see is the outside of the area, which is not great. You always want to keep your eyes on your target. Luckily, there are a decent group of cameras around the area, so the chance of us missing him when he comes out is relatively small.

And out he comes some 30 minutes later, which is rather odd. This place is not all that big, so he should have come out a lot faster. I fast forward the footage around the area a bit and find seven different instances of the same person leaving the market.

“What a pain,” I say to myself.

“It's only seven, right? Can’t you track all of them?” Anika says.

“I can, but it just takes time.”

“Hmm, I have an idea,” Cierra suddenly says. “Would asking Sam for help be an option? You were really trying to sell her skills.”

“That would help a lot. Let me give her a call.”

“Ooh, you don’t have to do that. She just walked into my office.”

“Wait, you are at work?”

“Yes, you guys did not want me there, so I went in to keep myself busy. I also made sure that my brother knows where you are; he said that he needs you on Tuesday in a meeting with some people, and that before that, you can do whatever you want.”

“Ooh, neat, so if I wrap this up quickly, I can go on vacation.”

“Exactly, so how do I let Sam into this call?”

“Just send her the same files I sent you, and you should be good.”

A moment later, I noticed another person logging into my augs, and a pleased voice greeted me.

“Hey killer, what the hell did you get yourself into to make this kind of hodgepodge of a connection your inter HUD is showing?” Sam says.

“Wait, really fuck, it was not supposed to... fuck, Cierra. Why didn’t you tell me?” I say, while rewriting the program to only have visual indications instead.

“Well, it did not bother me much, and you were mostly busy. I did wonder what a Fulgurite Launcher and a Tourmaline Driver were, though.”

“Ooh, those are some hacking programs. I use nothing special, really.” I say, trying my best to sound as nonchalant as possible.

“Right, then, what are we dealing with?” Sam asks.

“Some harassment and blackmail at the moment, but who knows what it turns into? I sent you the files,” I say, while getting a virtual keyboard to appear.

“Ahh, I see, so they are exploiting the gap in camera coverage. Who do you think the other guys are?” Sam asks.

“Probably a cover agency,” I say.

“Cover agency?” Cierra asks.

“Basically a group of people that hires actors or artists or, I guess, any person that needs money, really. I have done it a few times when I was younger. You basically get a package telling you where to go and stand, then wait until a specific time and follow a random path for a while.” Sam explains.

“And people do that?” Cierra asks.

“Well, it's not really difficult, and the pay is good,” Sam says.

“So, can we ask one of those people if they know anything?” Cierra asks.

“Not really. They don’t tend to tell you why they want you to do a certain thing. And even if we go as far as the person who hired them, we won’t find anything. These guys work with stealth drop-offs and everything. So it probably is a dead end.”

“What can we do then?” Anika asks, clearly getting frustrated.

“Well, we have a few options,” I say while putting pictures of our options on the screen. “We can try to track all of the green guys and hope that our suspect is still among them. We can check everyone that left and entered that market and cross them off against each other and see if there are any standouts, or we can go back to basics since Lyssa has identified two more people who have taken pictures, we can pay them a visit to see if they have a better description of the person we are looking for.”

“Uh, why not do all of them, then?” Anika asks.

“Well, we definitely can, but it would just take a long time, so we should choose what we want to do first,” I say.

“I see, so what do you think?” Anika asks.

“Well, personally, I would like to do a log to see who entered and left, but I tend to overthink things. Sam?”

“Normally, I would say track the guys in green, but this is an exception. Look at the third one to leave.”

I pull up the video on the screen and watch it a few times. To be honest, it does feel off, but I can’t tell why. It's like my brain is telling me something is wrong, but I have no clue what that is.

“Okay, I give up,” I say after a while, staring at it. “My brain is telling me something is off, but I have no clue what.”

“Makes sense. You did not grow up on the streets.” Sam says. “The image has been tampered with. It is a fake. There is no person there, he is painted in, but he is painted in according to the resolution of the camera, not the original scene that got filmed, making it look just slightly off.”

“So what you are saying is that some people here are real while others are not. Would that same trick work to remove people who were really there?” I ask.

“Yes, it is possible, but it would be more obvious. But if they are doing all this stuff, I think it is likely that they have not left that place in the same clothing.” Sam says.

“That only leaves doing a headcount,” I say.

We spent the next hour doing a count. While we are doing this, the cleaners come by, and we make it back to the car. Once the first count is over, we do it again because the results made no sense. I even sent Lyssa a discreet message to have her do her own search as well. And all of that still leads to the same result even when we stretch the range to include both the day before and after.

“So there is a person missing.” Sam says after our third run.

“ Fuck, why is it never easy?” I complain.

“What does it mean if there is a person missing?” Cierra asks.

“Means that there is one person who goes in there and does not come out. Usually, you expect that person to have left in a van or by some other means, but there is nothing like that around or going in that area.” Sam says.

“Doesn’t this happen more often?” Anika asks, “People not showing up again?”

“Yes, but usually, if there is a gap somewhere, more people would be missing, not just one person,” I say.

“That means that either we missed something, or there is something there that we are not seeing.” Sam says.

“So we should go there and investigate?” Anika asks.

“That would be an option, yes.” I say.

“Good. I was getting nervous with all this waiting around.” She says with a smile.

“Are you trying to lift the mood?” I ask.

“No, why would I?” she says, while turning red. “Strap in so we can go.”

A short drive later, we make it to a spot near the markets to park. I get out of the car and do a good stretch. Being cramped up in this thing is not that uncomfortable, but it is nice to be able to move.

When I stop, Anika is giving me a weird look. “I did not know you were that flexible.”

Ooh, fuck, should have limited the spine flexibility a bit. “Ooh, well, you know, things just happen. I have been trying to work out after the incursion.”

“You should keep working out then,” she says, with a smirk.

I look at her, a bit surprised. Well, then, I guess we put joking on the list of things Anika can do. Anyway, the market is bustling, and we move around it for a while, looking for any way to leave this area without being seen. But as far as I can tell, there are no doors exiting out of this area, so that is a good thing. After a good 15 minutes, I group back up with Anika.

“Please tell me you found something.” I say as soon as we are in speaking range.

“No, nothing. I guess you found nothing as well, then.”

“I did find something, just do not want to look there.”

“Ooh, and where is that, then?”

“You see that one tent selling knock-off Samurai merch? Next to that is an access grate to one of the city's storm drains.”

Anika gives me a dirty look. “You're kidding, right?”

“Uhm, no, if you haven’t found anything, then that leaves going into the sewer, so good luck. I will be waiting in the car.” I say, already trying to head out of here.

“No, you don’t,” Anika says, while picking me up and throwing me over her shoulder. How I wish I was taller or just heavier. Really, people having the ability to just pick me up kind of feels like an insult.

“You know that I can beat you up, right?” I say.

“Yeah, but it is hard to remember when it comes in such a tiny package.”

“I am not tiny. You're just unnecessarily large,” I say, while trying to ignore the two people laughing in my ears.

“I see. Well, this large person is taking you with them because two eyes are better than one.”

“I am pretty sure you already have two eyes. How about you go in this one, and I take the next sewer we have to go into? Deal?”

“Yeah, not happening. You are smarter than me, so I need you there to point out the things that I will miss.”