Not Quite Back to the Future

The apartment door swung open with a forceful shove, and Helen stormed in, her heart pounding in her chest. She had been out for a while due to work and poor choices. Meeting the cat girl Elena had put her on guard. Afterall a Netwatch agent poking around your apartment where you happen to have an illegal AI is never good.

"Nyx!" she called out urgently, her eyes scanning the room for her feline friend. There, on the windowsill, sat Nyx, his tail flicking in mild irritation at the sudden intrusion.

“What is it, Helen? My physical body was asleep while I explored that cashe of old world internet you have… It must be roughly 5 million terabytes of data. How you managed to fit it onto that antiquated device I will never know.” Nyx states

“You cracked the IOS security?” Helen asks in shock.

“No, I connected Via Bluetooth and have been interacting with it as an input/output. It has been slow but progress is being made… Now why did you burst through the door like that?” Nyx asks

“Right, I ran into a cat girl,” Helen states her voice laced with concern.

“Helen, I get that you may be old however genetically modded humans are fairly common nowadays.” Nyx starts to state almost like he is talking to his racist grandparent.

Helen's concern deepened as she explained, "It's not just the mods, Nyx. She had a high-quality NetWatch cyberdeck, the kind only field operatives get access to. And the weird thing is, she doesn't seem to be on their radar. All of her personal info is fake. Everything besides her address which has her in the apartment next to us.”

Nyx's feline ears twitched with curiosity. "That is indeed suspicious. If she's off the grid but wielding that kind of tech, we might be dealing with a rogue operator or something even more dangerous."

Helen's eyes bore into the door as she focused her attention on the invisible threats of the digital world. With deft movements, her virtual fingers tore through the tracking script as easily as a razor claws would shred paper. The dangerous intrusion was neutralized.

"Who in the fuck is watching my movements?" Helen muttered, her frustration clear in her voice.

Nyx, with his uncanny ability to navigate the digital realm, chimed in with a hint of amusement, "Well, Helen, you don't exactly keep a low profile. Your reputation precedes you."

Helen huffed in irritation. Her line of work had indeed thrust her into the spotlight, but she couldn't shake the feeling that this was something more personal, more insidious. Someone was playing games, and she intended to find out who.

"Helen, how about this: I'll dig into our neighbor's background, and you go ahead and answer that call," Nyx suggested.

As soon as Nyx mentioned the call, Helen's holo rang with an incoming call from Padre, the fixer she had never met. Helen hesitated for a moment, glancing between the ringing holo and Nyx.

"Fine," Helen muttered, conceding the point. In her past life, she had been adept with technology, though software had always left her head spinning. Could she code? Sure, but her creations often resembled a tangled web. Spaghetti code. So, delving deep into the net was often frustrating, something she seldom engaged in. It made perfect sense that the AI would outperform her in this regard.

"Sebastian Ibarra, to what do I owe the pleasure of this call?" Helen stated formally.

"Hello, Miss Reaper," Padre greeted her. Showing no shock at Helen knowing his real name.
"I reached out to Rogue because I need a favor. I'm not exactly paying, however, there is someone who needs help, and our mutual friend informed me that you have a bleeding heart."

Helen raised an eyebrow. "A bleeding heart, huh? Well, I suppose it depends on the favor."

That was something he had completely made up, after all Rogue was utterly terrified of her.

Padre's holographic image leaned closer to the holo-screen, his expression more serious. "I need you to track down a missing person, someone close to me. I have reason to believe that something bad may have happened. He is south of the border in Southern California. I can neither get hold of him or is ride."

Helen's interest was piqued. "Go on."