Outrun – Cyberpunk LitRPG
Chapter 263

I went straight down to the vault. No chance I was risking a Raijin hit squad by opening up my bag of very dangerous loot anywhere else. The vault was deep enough that if the thick walls didn’t block signals, the depth probably would.

I ran a hand over the thick metal door of the vault… it hadn’t received much love recently. After trapping and securing it, I just hadn’t been down here. I thought I’d use it much more than I actually did. As it turned out, I didn’t have much worth keeping super secure in the first place. 

I did think about moving my workshop down here, but that would be a massive pain in the ass to have to go up and down every single time I wanted to work on it. Hmm… Still, it was a nice place to have just in case. And I’d get some sue out of it now.

I entered the vault and sealed it behind. Trackers- they were my first worry. It was fairly easy to spot them once I found how Raijin set them up. Technical Expertise proved to be indispensable once more for that. I could mentally break down the copied blueprint instead of physically having to tear it apart and figure it out. Much easier. 

None of the stuff connected to the Net anyway, so it was as simple as literally ripping the hardwired trackers out. Most of them were quite small, and some of the tech didn’t have any in the first place. By the end of the night, though, I had a bag full of handy components ready to go and another bag full of trackers.

I didn’t immediately shatter them. It was a bit risky, but I stuffed them back into the signal-blocking bag and shoved them into one of the safety deposit boxes lining the walls. If I ever needed a Raijin strike squad, I’d be able to set out some tantalizing bait.

That was two of the Big 7 now, chek? Should I… hit them all? It was a dangerous goal, but I couldn’t deny it was a tempting one. That’d mean going after Agrican, though, and that was a very bad idea. If it was a big enough hit? BosSpace would get involved. And when they come waving the God Rods, the entire planet would turn on me.

Of course… it couldn’t really be considered hitting two of them if I were to be serious about it. The original interface holder did ninety-nine percent of the work for the Sentinel heist, and this one was an offshoot of Raijin, not Raijin itself. Hmm… unless stealing Sean’s heart counted. Maybe I should set up actual hits?

Whatever. I cleaned up some of my gear, put stuff away, and headed back to the BC Gym to sleep. It’d been a long night, and I was more than ready. Not to mention I had a Perk waiting for me.

— — —

Inspector Von Halsin stared at the guards before him, rubbing at his eyes. Getting woken up during the graveyard shift wasn’t his ideal version of a good night. He’d much rather be cozy back in his corporate-sponsored apartment, not here in the middle of nowhere. 

Unfortunately for Halsin, he’d made quite a few enemies in his time as a Raijin Inspector. Enemies that were petty enough to send him out here, amongst the nobodies of Portside, instead of working on something actually important back in the Corporate Quarter.

“Sir?” The head guard of this facility looked up as Halsin bored a hole through his head.

Halsin rubbed a hand down his face. His lessers looked to him for leadership. He couldn’t just mope the entire time. ”Right… so you have no idea how the thief got in, how they moved around, nor how they got out?” 

The head guard, whose name wasn’t important enough to remember, hesitantly nodded his head. “A-affirmative, sir.”

”Remind me again why we hired you instead of local gutter rats?” Halsin’s face distorted in rag. He glared at the useless guards before him. “They could’ve at least given our thief a disease!”

The guard took a step back, surprised by the shout. ”Um…”

Halsin’s heartbeat monitor sent out an alarm only he could hear and his system was flooded with chemicals. His spiking wrath faded annd everything turned cool and calm. “Get out of my sight. Go- go mop the floors or something. Wait- no, you incompetents might slip and crack your skulls open.”

The guards assembled froze up, half seeming to head toward a cleaning closet while the other half just stood around in uncertainty. The head guard glanced over his shoulder like he wanted someone else to take the bullet for him. The other guards looked away just as quickly. “S-sir?”

“Just leave!” Inspector Von Halsin waved his hand toward the mayflies. A moment later, the corporate operators that followed him forced the guards away. “Peace at last.”

“Take a breath, Von. Still need that head of yours to figure out what happened.” A voice came across his audio suite. Vanessa, his runner. Her voice was the only thing good about waking up these days.

”Right, right… Sorry.” Von took a moment to calm down. He moved for the cleaning closet that the thief used as an express access shortcut down into the high-security storage room. There was a drop down into the room below. He crouched down and ran a hand around the rugged edge of the hole.

His mind rapidly reconstructed the scene. A soft voice drew him from his thoughts. “What are you thinking, Von?”

“This was done by a professional. Had insider knowledge of the facility.” He shrugged lightly. “Might be a mole somewhere.”

“Dozens, actually. Mostly kept to low levels, though. It would’ve been someone way higher up to get the blueprint for this place.” Vanessa corrected him as the sound of a keyboard clicking came across the line. She wasn’t actually physical at the moment, strapped in deep into the Net, but she still played the sound effect just for him. It was the small things, really. 

“Remind me why we keep those parasites again?” Von’s face distorted once more, this time in pure disgust. There was nothing worse than a traitor.

” Counter-espionage-“

”I know why. Rhetorical…” Von sighed deeply. “Sorry, sorry, didn’t mean to be snappy.”

Vanessa went silent for a moment. ”Top dogs breathing down our necks?”

“When are they not?” Von tilted his head and stood up. “Back to this, though. Our thief—assuming there was only one in the first place—got access to this closet first. Anything on the feeds?”

”Still scrubbing. No sign of them anywhere, nor any indication of how they got down. There are a few suspicious points I’m checking, but nothing yet. As far as cams go? We’re dealing with a ghost.” 

“Right, well, they must’ve been quite small to fit through here.” With a thought, his eyes' mode shifted and easily took in the width of the hole, as well as a dozen other measurements. “Slightly larger than a child, but not by much. No microfibers caught on the metal reinforcements means they slipped through without even catching their clothes.”

”Noted.” The sound effect of the keyboard came across once more. “So far, we have a highly professional ghost who isn’t much bigger than a child.”

”So far.” Von motioned to his entourage. Two of the operators in heavy tac-gear stepped forward. “You two, stay here. The rest of you, don’t let anyone in or out without my say so. Still a chance this is all smoke and our thief is around here somewhere playing with a mirror.” 

“Sir!” The group split up, going about his orders.

Von stalked off toward the elevator and hit the floor button for the floor below. “Was anyone injured?”

Vanessa quickly replied. ”No. At least, nothing more than the standard injuries miners might get while venturing into the Aether. Our thief was in and out like a literal ghost, neither being seen nor heard until they struck.”

“Yeah, well, ghosts don’t use explosives…” Von went silent as the elevator doors opened. He waved a hand to flash his credentials, bypassing security and entered the hall.

The door to the storage room had already been flung open by the guards, and the inside was in complete disarray. The thief’s explosives had knocked stuff off its shelves, scattered dust, and shot concrete debris everywhere. It’d be a serious pain in the ass to fix all of this. Good thing he wasn’t a janitor.

He looked around the chaos for a moment. “Do we know what was stolen yet?”

A moment later, his lovely companion updated his HUD. ”Here’s the list. Trackers are still silent.”

Von stared at the list thoughtfully for a few moments. Most of the stuff he’d never heard of, but there didn't seem to be any discernible pattern. “Put out a watch. Night Markets, auctions, private collectors- the usual. If they try to move it, I want to know.” 

“Roger. Recruit or exterminate?”

“Hmm… wait and see.” Von moved through the dust. Their ghost had someone managed to perfectly avoid leaving even a footprint in here. There were almost no traces- almost. He eyed the center of the room.

There, lying in the middle of the space, was a single phantasmal feather. The black mass shimmered with almost a purple hue in the dim light. It looked faintly translucent too, as if dropped from a ghastly bird. The ghost theory looked more and more true with each discovery.

The guards thankfully hadn’t touched the evidence, though he wasn’t even sure what it was in the first place. He moved over and crouched by its side, scanning it with his eye. “What is this?”

The clicking of a keyboard came across the line again. ”No matches. Looks like… a crow feather? A Sprite, perhaps?”

”Sprites don’t leave traces like this.” Von immediately shut the idea down. He himself was an Adept, so although he wasn’t as familiar with sprites as a Magus, he did have quite a bit of knowledge about them.

”Can you bag it? Bring it back and have the eggheads run an analysis.”

“Yeah.” Von pulled an evidence bag from his pocket and adjusted his gloves. As soon as he touched the feather, it faded away, completely destroying the evidence. “Ugh- damnit. Did you get that?”

”Roger. Recorded. Some kind of magic, then?”

”Or a really delicate substance. Why leave it behind? Calling card? It’s rare that someone leaves a calling card after hitting Raijin these days.” Though if someone did, having one that disappeared definitely seemed the way to go. It was practically impossible to trace.

”Maybe they didn’t know it was Raijin?” Vanessa suggested.

”Surely not, right? They had an insider deep enough to give them the schematic, so they must’ve known this was one of ours.” Von rubbed at his temples and stood up. “As if the internal strife after the CEO’s death wasn’t bad enough, now we have to deal with a phantom thief?”

”We’re not supposed to know about that…” And indeed, she was right. The only reason they knew about the top dog’s death was thanks to Vanessa hacking into the corporate mainframe. 

“Right.” They’d made a promise to keep secret about it less they attract undue attention. He glanced back toward the door. Thankfully, his communications with Vanessa ran through a sub-mandible mic. They hadn’t heard a thing. He called out to the operators. “Someone come run a chemical analysis. Figure out what explosives the thief used.”

”Sir!” One of the operators immediately moved into the room and got to work.

“Code name for our thief?” His Netrunner asked. “For the logs.”

“Phantom? Wraith? Ghost?” Von shrugged. “Those are a bit basic.”

“If it's an impressive name, maybe it’ll make the bigwigs get off my back.”

“True. Adjust the logs. Make this look way worse than it was. Off the record, of course.” Von Halsin smirked. “Let’s go with… Nightshade, then. And our Nightshade killed a dozen guards, so we’ll have to spend so much more time looking into all of this.” 

“What a shame.” Vanessa chuckled lightly and adjusted the file for ‘Nightshade’.

“Send a list to the operators.” Von ordered his lovely assistant. “Oh, and there are a lot of rats in this place, right? Nightshade also left a blood bath on their way out the door. It might take months to figure this all out.”

— — —

I scratched at my ear lightly as I got out of the shower and threw on some clothes. Nothing better than a hot shower after a long day of work. There wasn’t anything like it in terms of stress relief.

I fell onto my bed. Next up on the list of Perks was… Melee Weapons? Ugh- I didn’t really want to fight right now. Skip. Explosives too for similar reasons. I’d have to come back to them another night.

After those… Evasion? Were all my remaining Perks combat-related? Whatever. Evasion was fine for tonight, I guess.

The interface pulled me into the pavilion. As always, gentle moonlight flowed through the windows and paper-thin walls, giving the entire room a soft illumination. I took my time, wandering around the area before finally settling in front of Evasion’s shelf. 

I looked through it, guided by the flickering flames. If I could find something even as remotely good as Burst Step, I’d be happy.

「Daemon Dodge」

「Sea Stride」

「Mirror Image」

「Arc Flash」

「Phantasmal Fake-out」

There were a bunch of interesting Perks to look through. In particular, Evasion had a lot of combo Perks at the second tier. Daemon Dodge, for example, was one that combined with Net to evade, well, Daemons. 

More interestingly, at least to me, was Arc Flash. It was an Evasion Perk that specifically combined with my Kinetic ability. It was like it was custom-made just for me, which was awesome. It likewise was the one I went with after reading the description.

「Arc Flash - Strike like lightning, appearing and disappearing at will. Where you move, the storm follows.」

I could be wrong, but it looked like a short-range teleport of some kind. After using Spectral Flock, I was keenly aware of how useful teleportation could be. Spectral Flock, while having quite a bit of range, suffered from needing a setup. If I could teleport freely at will? I’d be unstoppable.

I grabbed the scroll and moved to the easel, throwing it on. The scroll unraveled, showing boots clad in lightning. The lighting seemed to surge and flash brightly, making everything go white.

By the time my vision returned, I was back in the BC Gym, staring at the ceiling. Was it another active type Perk then? I didn’t feel much different… I can figure it out in the morning. I settled back down and enable Lethargic Presence, allowing the ever-helpful Perk to lull me to sleep.