Dante was met with a scornful gaze the moment he entered Victor’s office. The broker wasn’t doing too well, the circles under his eyes showing that he hadn’t had much sleep in a while. His hair was messier and the stubble on his face a bit longer. From the looks of it, he hadn’t gone home once in the past few days as well.
Though he wanted to shrug it off as the symptoms of withdrawal, Dante knew all too well that he was to blame.
"You got some nerve making me wait."
Victor’s voice was tinged with resentment.
"Can’t a man eat his dinner first?" Dante raised an eyebrow. "If you were in such a rush, you should’ve said so."
Technically speaking, the broker had told him to come over right away, but that one text was far from enough. If the matter was truly time sensitive, he would have mentioned so in the text so there wouldn’t be any misunderstanding.
"Why are you suddenly..." Victor shook his head in defeat. "Damn it, Dante. Stop messing with my blood pressure."
"I take it you have a new job for me?"
Dante took a seat and relaxed, or tried to, at least. Whatever was bothering the fixer right now likely concerned him as well. Staring at him with grim eyes, Victor kept his silence for a while before asking
"Did you see the news?"
"Yeah, what about it?"
"... right now, nothing." Sighing, the fixer closed his eyes and sighed. "There is something in the air. I don’t know what, exactly, but from the looks of it, a big storm is coming for this city."
Dante didn’t comment, and the fixer stared at the ceiling in silence. Some time later, he turned his gaze back to him and spoke in an even tone.
"To answer your previous question, yes, I have a job for you."
Dante said nothing and waited.
"It’s nothing big, really. You can probably get it done tonight."
Victor fished something out of his desk drawers and placed it in front of Dante. It was a seemingly normal data chip, black in color and with no label. As soon as he saw it, Dante felt like he already knew what the gig was about.
"All you need to do is sneak into the address I’m about to send you and insert this in a specific terminal. It’ll take a couple of minutes to copy what it needs. Once you’re done, just bring it back to me."
"Another one of these?" Dante pursed his lips.
"Do you want it or not?" Victor frowned.
Giving it a moment of thought, Dante heaved a sigh.
"Yeah, I got the time to spare."
He had all the time in the world. Well, only if he were to disregard all the enemies he made last week and his urgent need to upgrade his body.
Reaching out to grab the data-chip, Dante recalled something he planned to ask the fixer.
"By the way, how’s that thing I asked you about?"
As if he knew it was coming, Victor shook his head.
"There are always people looking to buy those things, but I think you should wait some time before looking for a deal."
Dante had entrusted him with the sale of the machines he stole from Caligo’s underground hideout, specifically the small assembly line that was in the first room he escaped to. Dante had played it off as something he got from a favor he did to someone, and though he hadn’t bought it entirely, Victor showed his willingness to play along by not asking for details.
"Well, I’m not really in a rush." Though that wasn’t exactly true, it wasn’t false either.
Dante got up to leave, and the fixer called out to him.
When he turned around to see what he had to say, Victor gave him a complicated look.
"Just... finish the job and go home. No need to pick things up along the way."
Understanding what he was alluding to, Dante just gave a resigned shrug.
Jobs that involve tampering with data were a dime a dozen. Be it to steal, retrieve, deliver, delete, corrupt, or destroy, such requests were always available and Dante had worked on a few before.
That wasn’t to say all of them had the same difficulty—Delivering a virus to the system of a self-driving car was much easier than stealing the data stored in the workstation of a researcher at Titan Forge. Thankfully, the gig this time involved only a small time advertisement agency.
Dante didn’t know what data the client wanted to steal, nor did he care. He decided to take this as his chance to relax a little, that’s why he was going to follow Victor’s advice and just do his job then go home.
He made a slight miscalculation, however.
A short train ride later, Dante arrived at Yellowstar, one of the streets bordering Nightsun and Red Hill. The address led him to an eight-story office building. He was surprised to see that most floors still had their lights on. That was when it hit him—the workday wasn’t over.
Well, it was over, if one looked at the clock. But for the poor employees of these low-level companies, working all the way to midnight was a common occurrence. AI might not have taken over, but to ensure it never does, they had no choice but to strive for impossible standards of productivity, even if it came at the cost of sacrificing their personal lives.
Dante had no way of knowing when the employees would leave, which leaves him with only one choice: he would have to go and come back at a later time. Since it was still only nine yet, he would have to wait at least four hours before he could be sure that the building was empty.
Four hours of absolutely nothing. All of a sudden, Dante remembered what he told Victor earlier.
"Yeah, I got the time to spare."
As it turned out, he had far too much time, and far too little to do.