The Zetatech air filtration plant must have been dead for years. No wonder Maelstrom eventually claimed its skeleton. Three storeys of corroded ductwork and cracked synthcrete bordered Kabuki's commercial strip, reminding of once grand plans now turned into industrial rot. Graffiti covered every visible surface – Maelstrom insignia layered over other gang tags layered over original corporate signage. A chain-link perimeter fence topped with razor wire bore signs of recent attempts to patch it up. Two cameras set in the open at the sides of the main gate. But Zara also spotted a third digital eye tucked under a loading dock awning at an easy to miss spot. They’d need to hack that one.

  She crouched behind a shipping container fifty metres from the service tunnel entrance, netrunning suit tight under the jacket she put on top of it. The suit's dormant cooling channels pressed against her ribs, interface ports - or whatever those things were - ground onto her spine like chrome knuckles whenever she moved. The sensations weren’t even uncomfortable, just constantly there, keeping her aware.

  "Overwatch set.” Diego's voice reported through comms. Steady as masonry. “One guard on the catwalk, second floor, north side—stationary. Second walking perimeter clockwise, east side, just passed the loading crane. Cameras flanking the main gate."

  “Plus one under the dock awning.” Zara replied, grinning. “You missed one.”

  “It’s offline.”

  Her grin faded. “Kai, how’s it going?”

  "Boomsticks planted, boss lady. Just waiting for your word." Kai sounded like he'd mainlined a couple of stims since the Neon Hole, which he probably had. "Point one's the loading dock fire escape. Point two's that ventilation shaft on the east wall. Say the word and this building develops some new architecture."

  Raven knelt beside Zara. She'd been quiet since they left the Hole – not like making a point quiet, more like conserving resources quiet. Her colour hadn't improved. The bruise along her jaw had darkened to a mottled purple-black, making the pallor look even worse.

  According to the original building schematics, which Raven exhumed from some dusty backup node of the municipal archive, the service tunnel ran all the way under the plant's east side.

  Zara went on first, turned on her flesh light. Raven hissed in disapproval, apparently Zara hit sensitive optics she’d adjusted for low light.

  “Sorry.” Zara reduced the volume.

  The tunnel smelled of standing water and some chemical runoff that made Zara want to cover her nose. Pipes ran along the ceiling, some leaking, mysterious liquid dripping. Drops fell through corroded metal grating under their feet, creating uneven irksome rhythm. Each step rang faintly, forcing Zara’s advance to be frustratingly slow. Raven caught up and took her over. The netrunner was somehow able to make less noise while moving faster. Zara noticed then that she was placing her boots on the grating's cross-supports where the sound was duller. She matched the pattern.

  Forty metres in, the tunnel forked. Left branch continued into darkness. Right branch ended at a hatch – corroded but functional, its lock mechanism a physical keypad that had probably never been updated since the plant's working days.

  Raven examined it. Chrome fingers found the keypad's edge, pried off the cover plate. Underneath, a simple circuit board. She pulled a thin cable, connected it to a contact point on the board. Ten seconds. The lock clicked.

  They opened the hatch and climbed through into a maintenance corridor. Dimmer. The smell changed, machine oil replacing the chemical reek. The plant's guts: exposed conduit, junction boxes, thick cable runs. Emergency lighting strips along the floor cast a low amber wash made Zara feel like they were traversing the bottom of a dirty aquarium.

  Voices ahead. Two, maybe three. Indistinct, the consonants chewed up by cranky vocal augmentation – the kind of modded larynx that gave Maelstrom that distinctive synthesiser-and-gravel sound.

  Raven raised her hand. Stop.

  They pressed against the wall. Zara killed the flesh light and drew her Lexington. Through a huge gap in the corridor's wall panels ahead she could see the open space of the factory main floor. Two Maelstrom gangers were sitting on a crate, one half obscured by a support pillar, passing a stim inhaler between them. Both heavily modified – optics replaced with the multi-lens clusters Maelstrom favoured, faces more chrome than skin. One of them had removed his entire lower jaw and replaced it with an articulated metal assembly.

  Raven touched Zara's shoulder. Pointed past the gangers, to the other side of the factory floor. Zara squinted trying to make anything out in the direction. According to what little specs of knowledge she could recall from the schematics, the access terminal should be further in, deeper into the plant's infrastructure. She nodded.

  The trick was patience. Wait for both gangers to be looking away then slip through the open to the raw of haphazardly piled crates, which would block the sightline between them and the maelstrommers. Looked easy enough, but Zara knew that any sound would immediately attract guards’ attention - too close. She tried to steady her breathing waiting for the right moment.

  Finally, one of the goons activated his agent’s holo display, showing something to his choom. Chromed heads bent together, optics focusing on the hologlow. Zara went low, saw Raven mimic her movement. They moved towards the crates – fast and silent. The Maelstrommers started laughing at something. So far luck was on Phantom’s side.

  Thirty metres of factory floor covered right in the time it took gangers to scroll through whatever garbage was so entertaining. The voices faded behind them. Zara touched her chest where a tiny cross set pressed by the alien fabric against her skin. Her fingertips traced the bulge of cooling architecture.

  Another maintenance tunnel. A stairwell descending half a level. The air grew cooler. The plant's old climate control was probably still running in some areas. Or maybe it was just synthcrete bleeding its chill. The sign on the door at the bottom of the stairs indicated a server room. Its lock was updated. Slick modern interface with faintly glowing numbers. Raven stepped forward. Zara saw chrome fingers on her right hand move as if rearranging something invisible in the air. Must be deploying her software.

  The lock blinked all numbers flashing at once, Zara heard a barely audible soft click. The door opened into what once must have been a proper server room. Now it was a cross between a storage and a decrepit data center. Industrial shelving lined two walls, loaded with hardware – hoards of salvaged junk trailing exposed wiring. A row of access terminals sprawled along the opposite wall, indicator lights blinking green and amber, some of them stood gutted and dead. Assortment of tangled cables covered the floor.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Through a large reinforced window, the main factory floor was visible. Its cavernous space was dominated by dead assembly lines and repurposed workbenches where more Maelstrom moved in the middle distance.

  The only entrance was through the door Raven and Zara came in.

  "One way in," Zara said.

  "One way out." Raven echoed.

  She closed the door and went straight to the terminals. After giving them a brief look, she turned back to Zara.

  “We are in luck. They are still using these servers.” She unzipped her jacket, reached inside and produced a matte black casing. As she withdrew her hand, the collar shifted and Zara saw the unmistakable gleam of dense weave of a netrunning suit at Raven's neckline. Consulting. Right.

  Raven either didn't notice the look or chose to ignore it. She set the casing on a terminal. It was thin, compact, with a single yellow warning label on its side. Zara recognised an external cyberdeck. Raven produced another casing slightly larger, ragged, no labels.

  "External decks." She placed the second deck next to the first one. "Run the Ihara-Grubb algorithms that translate the subnet's raw data into spatial experience. Without one your neural processor would try to interface with the data stream directly. You'd seize in under a second."

  Zara touched the smaller deck. The casing was cool and smooth. She lifted it to take a better look. It was heavier than it looked. An external deck was very old-school tech. Serious netrunners used implanted cyberdecks, integrated directly into their neural architecture – faster, no lag, no external hardware to lose or break. Not being a runner, Zara didn't have an implanted deck. Her side-deck handled surface-level quickhacks and basic connectivity. So to actually dive into the Net, she needed external processing power.

  “What’s the other deck for?” Zara asked.

  “Backup.” Raven replied, connecting the cables. "Now listen carefully. When you jack in, your consciousness transfers. Fully. Nothing like a personal link connection. Your brain stops processing sensory input from your body. Hearing, touch, pain – all of it gets cut off. What's left is pure subnet experience, routed through the deck into your neural interface." She looked at Zara "You won't feel your body. You won't hear anything from meatspace. For all practical purposes, you won't be here."

  "Sounds like an upgrade right now," Zara muttered.

  Raven ignored it.

  "The deck runs Ihara-Grubb. It takes the raw data architecture of the subnet and translates it into something your brain can interpret – geometry, spatial relationships, structures you can navigate. What you see in there is not real. It's metaphor. Your neurons building the best model they can from information they weren't designed to process." She paused. Swallowed. Once. Twice. "You will actually see the underlying structures – the ICE, the access nodes, the data flows. Expect industrial aesthetics – dense, blocky, functional. Chrome Serpent is competent with physical architecture but not creative. He’d be using standard blocks. The whole point of this dive is the hardwired security system. Cameras, turrets, door locks – they are all controlled from a central security node wired into the subnet. Find that node, break the ICE protecting it, disable the systems. That's your entire objective."

  "How do I find it?"

  "Follow the data traffic. Security protocols generate more network activity than anything else in a system this size – constant monitoring loops, status pings, sensor feeds. Find the heaviest flow, follow it upstream. That's where the node sits." Chrome fingers traced a path in the air. "When you reach the ICE, your deck has breach protocols loaded. Deploy them. Probe, identify, breach. Standard sequence. The programs handle the heavy work. You aim them."

  "How do I do that?”

  “With clear intention.” Raven remained calm. Patient. “We are not attempting anything creative either. Not building complex chains. The daemon on your deck should be capable to handle the scope. It’s coded to react to your thought patterns. I’ve no time to go deep into the theory right now, so you’ll just have to trust me.”

  “Got it.” That actually sounded way easier than Zara expected. “How do I move?"

  "Again - intention. Not locomotion. You think about where you want to be, you move there. Don't try to walk. Your brain will try to impose walking because that's what it knows. Override that. Will yourself forward. It'll feel wrong at first. Your brain will catch up."

  Zara's pulse was climbing. The hot-wire hum of something about to happen – the same frequency she'd felt before the Arasaka job, before jumping through the window down to the street to pull Diego from under the noses of those Scavs, before grabbing Raven’s hand at the Afterlife, before every moment that had been worth remembering. She put the deck back on the terminal.

  "How do I get out?"

  "You surface. That’s the term anyway. Although that’s not technically correct, since your consciousness remains in your body. But for a safe jack out, you need to move your consciousness back towards the access point, back the way you came in. That allows the deck to perform the neural transition, to e-routes your processing from digital to biological. You’ll feel the pull. You must follow it, submit. It’s like waking up, but harder. Once you're back in your body, unplug."

  "And if I can't surface?"

  Raven nodded as if in approval.

  "Good question.” She plugged a cable into Zara’s deck. “Now my deck is networked to yours. I'll be monitoring your vitals, your neural load, your position in the subnet. If you're in trouble and can't surface on your own, I can trigger an emergency extraction from my end." A pause. "It's not gentle. But it's survivable. Better than the alternative."

  "Which is?"

  "Staying in. Getting hit by ICE. Getting stuck between corrupted data clusters. Having your body overheat. You name it."

  Silence for a beat. Only the low hum of the processing hardware and some distant radio barely audible through the walls, more a hint than an actual sound.

  "Don't go deeper than you need to," Raven said. "Don't explore. Don't touch anything that isn't between you and the security node. Get in, disable, surface." She held Zara's gaze. "Chrome Serpent is mid-tier. Your instincts are sharp. Sharper than most people I’ve ever worked with. That translates into the Net."

  Not reassurance. Assessment.

  "Let's go," Zara said.

  Raven moved both decks to the floor beneath the window, wires trailing from the terminal. Then she sat down next to them with her back against the wall. From this position she could see the door and the terminal displays simultaneously. Her face had gone a shade greyer in the harsh white industrial light. Zara noticed beads of sweat at her hairline.

  She pulled a cable and plugged into her temple port.

  "Everything’s ready." She pointed at Zara’s deck that had one cable still not connected to anything. "Deck to terminal establishes the subnet connection. Deck to your neural port carries your consciousness. All you have to do is jack-in."

  Zara took the cable. She found the port behind her ear. The connector was cold.

  She looked at Raven. The netrunner was already interfaced – not deep, just monitoring level, reading telemetry. Her eyes had gone half-focused, attention split between meatspace and the data feeds now scrolling across her Kiroshi overlay.

  "Here goes nothing."

  Zara slotted the cable home.