Outrun - Cyberpunk LitRPG

I leaned up against the wall of my new apartment and listened to the slow beats of music from my handheld radio as I took a swig from Crow’s Canteen of Chaos. I had poured most drinks from the nearby vending machines into it and now had a full list of pops I could drink basically at will for free. Truly a priceless artifact just for that.

Hmm… maybe I should get some kind of acid and test that too? Or lava- would that even count as a liquid? Not to drink, of course, but never know when I need to melt something… I settled the best I could against the wall as I looked down at my phone, pushing past the temporary distraction offered by the canteen.

Go break into Ajay Insurance, Shiro! It’ll be a quick and easy way to earn money- not. There’s a reason the payout for this one was particularly high. Pay matched danger, after all. It had been two days of constant studying through the Net and watching the place for me to realize the true extent of trouble I stepped into.

Plan A had originally been to break in at night and do this sneakily. I needed more intel though. Ajay Insurance sat closer to the southern end of Little Yukoto, so it was rather close. I ended up setting up at a Neo-seafood restaurant just across the street. Neo-seafood, basically, was a seafood restaurant that served synth fish…

Yeah, it was as disgusting as it sounded. If I had to eat one more imitation shrimp, I might just puke. Seriously! Who thought imitating something spongy like shrimp was a good idea? There was no way real shrimp was as spongy as the synth version or people simply wouldn’t ever get it.

Thankfully, I had quite a bit of money saved up so eating at the place didn’t hurt me financially. It was a bit expensive - and at most half as good as Big Mike’s burgers - but at least it was food that offered a wider variety of nutrients than what the prepacks could provide. Synth food had synthetically altered semi-healthiness to it at the very least. ‘Course, I was better off eating real food, but that was damn expensive in this day and age.

While waiting and watching over the two days, I looked over the Net to get a better idea of what I was working with. Really, it was a good test of my skills. Getting Net to one hadn’t turned me into a Netrunner or anything of the sort, but it did improve my ease of using the Net, operating systems, and set the boundaries for actually becoming a Netrunner.

It had a very in-depth guide on hardware too, something I suspect was influenced by my Tech skill being level five already. If I had to say, I could probably handle most common and uncommon, heck even rarer hardware without an issue. The ‘tutorial’ had been lacking in actual hacking knowledge though. It sat closer to copy and pasting…

Unfortunately, I needed a deck - whether external or internal - to act as a medium for my Interface Plugs to really get into running through the Net and turn myself into an actual Netrunner. As it stands, I can’t even interact with most systems on my own. Rather- I could, but it would probably fry my Neural System Interface.

I shifted, fully feeling the discomfort of not yet owning furniture. I would have to look into getting some soon, but was hesitant to spend money quite yet. I only had eight hundred Rayn, and half of that was reserved for buying food. The rest was in my savings for next month's rent though I had a sneaking suspicion I would blow through my saving plans.

Anyway, Ajay Insurance… as far as I could tell, it was a basic financial firm. They were a small corporation run by the CEO Ajay. I cyberstalked him across his various social media pages, and the guy lived quite the extravagant life. Every other week dating a year back he would go to big parties thrown by various yacht owners at the various marinas and post to his social media. Every single day he would post on social media, sometimes several times. He was quite prolific. His obvious love of attention could be a potential in…

The issue, however, was Ajay's business. The financial firm was quite small in size and acted as an insurance agency for civilian chrome. There was no way that it had enough money flow to support the CEO’s expensive interests. There was something else going on here; something I should watch for lest I get caught up in it.

I needed an entry to the place so I could look further into it and get the ball rolling for the gig. Without a doubt, I would need to access their servers. If I was any good at Netrunning, I would be able to just hack in semi-remotely to grab what I needed and upload the virus. Unfortunately, that wasn’t in the playbooks. There was a workaround though.

In this technological age, server rooms were practically vaults. They tended to be the most secure places in a building, even for small corps since they were the core of the Net Architecture. Thankfully, Net had enlightened me on a lot of basic knowledge, just not actually running the Net. If I accessed the server from the actual server room, I should be able to bypass the Net Architecture and any other cyber security defenses as an ‘Admin’ rather than an intruder. Hence came my plans to break in at night and access the servers.

Of course, before any great heists, it was important to get the lay of the land, ie my two-day stakeout. Ajay Insurance sat on the second floor of an office building. It sat halfway down the street and acted like a corner thanks to the small side street cutting into the maze of alleys and complexes hidden by the block’s face. It featured a grand window across the entire space that allowed me an easy view of the building’s internals thanks to the dual-zoom augment in the Advant Phantom.

During the day, there was a constant flow of workers and clients moving around, but the building shut down at eight every night. I had even managed to find Aythryn City’s digital architecture archives and access them through the Blue Crusade backdoor, so I had a blueprint at the ready. Thanks to Eidetic Schematic, I instantly memorized the blueprint. It was rather nice that the Perk applied to all kinds of plans and prints rather than just the technical kind.

Eidetic Schematic really shined considering my PA had some serious issues showing city blueprints in my HUD. Using the blueprint, I started to form a rough plan of attack while I watched from across the street.

Unfortunately, Plan A got chopped almost entirely once Mr. Ajay activated the security on the first night. It was now way too close to plan Z for comfort. Heck, I might’ve just considered outright abandoning the gig if I didn’t think there were other ways into the place than a nightly break-in.

Two turrets overlooked the room and motion sensors sat at every junction from the looks of things. The turrets were some pretty high-end stuff too. I had seen the model before, and they were nasty pieces of work.

They were Errant Security’s AR-Lockdown model. I would have to get closer to tell which version exactly, but it was trouble regardless. They were set to gun down anyone in their field except for those whitelisted. Maybe it's just Ajay since he left after everyone else. They had dual detection thanks to their heat sensors and cameras. Each one sat standalone with its own daemon so a Netrunner couldn’t brute force a shutdown and they had an eight-hour internal battery pack in case of power outages. The turrets were very expensive, and very out of place in the small corp’s building.

They were placed at good points to overlook the entire room. I had managed to sneak by a single ES Lockdown a while back, but I had zero confidence in getting past two. The model's only weakness was its detection radius had a rather small cone. Still, with two of them and several other security features to boot, the chances of getting by with my current skills were almost non-existent, especially since the ES Lockdowns would probably see right through Blackout with their heat detection. I did some rough calculations on timing, and I would have to be perfect to the second if I wanted in, which wasn’t ideal.

From what it looked like, my best shot was to get into the server with an alternative measure. It would be difficult, but not as hard as sneaking past several motion detectors and turrets. It would also be potentially a lot safer too.

How would I get in though? IT was simple and easy. An IT gal just showing up could cause some suspicion… I took another drink from the canteen before tossing it into the shadows. I was temporarily stuck coming up with a different plan.

I researched the company a bit more and didn’t see any mention of an IT department. It makes sense, the corp was tiny, so they probably didn’t have one. They most likely contracted out to an IT corporation like a lot of smaller ones do.

I need them to call me in. Well, not me, but their normal IT company. Then, I sneak in as the IT, get access to the servers, and profit. It had a lot of moving parts I would need to think about, and I would need a bunch of tools I didn’t have at the moment. For one, a deck.

Mainly just to actually access the servers and find what I was looking for. It would also jump-start my journey as a Netrunner extraordinaire- or a script kiddie until I learned to actually mess with code. Still, never overlook the power of programs. There were some incredibly powerful ones out there.

There were a bunch of other minor things too, but I could work those out in time. The most important part of the plan is them calling in IT. Hmm… I pulled up a map of the city’s infrastructure. Usually, such a thing was heavily regulated, but my backdoor into Blue Crusade Inc. easily allowed me access to most of the city’s archives. Not a day goes by that I don’t appreciate my decision to buy the program, even if it was expensive.

The map showcased every access tunnel, water pipe, and powerline beneath the city. It even showed a few entrances to the largely abandoned Underground. ‘Course, the underground infrastructure wasn’t part of the Underground, no, the Underground was far further under the ground than the infrastructure. The infrastructure just happened to be underground but it couldn’t be confused with the Underground further under the ground. My head spun. Stupid Shiro, giving yourself a headache.

I took a small break to finish moving the rest of the way in. Nothing too crazy, just stashing most of my stuff in the kitchenette since it was the only place with furniture. For now, until I could get a proper table to work on, the kitchenette would be my work and eating space.

Also, I took the chance to take a comfortable shower. The only issue I had was drying my hair afterward. It had been a while before I hacked it off, and it was starting to show some length again. I thought I looked better with long hair, but it was just annoying to deal with at a certain point.

I took a while and enjoyed the break to clear my head. After changing my radio to ancient jazz from the time before the music industry had become an autotune mess, I looked through several sites to figure out what kind of furniture I wanted to buy when I had the money. It was such a mundane concern that I felt a little stupid using it as a distraction for plotting a corporate heist.

With my head cooled down, I refocused the city’s infrastructure map on the building in question, memorizing every tunnel. I couldn’t deny the excitement starting to coalesce in my bones as a plan slowly started to twine together in my head.