Corpo Age Chapter 40: Sending a Message

I stayed back on the rooftop and glanced down at the floor. I watched as the highlighted red enemies slowly slumped down one by one before disappearing. Only the pair of guards in front of the master bedroom were spared.

“They’re about done. We should head down lest they notice anything,” Thorne stated from beside .

“Okay, let’s go.” With those words said, we leaped down onto the balcony. My boots canceled out any noise of the impact, which saved from the hassle of having to roll on the ground to disperse the impact.

One of our n stood watch by the balcony door as we walked by to head into the living room. Several bodies lay sprawled on the ground in every corner that our eyes reached.

“Sitrep?” I heard Thorne quietly ask from behind, “Twenty targets subdued except for the three by the master bedroom, as instructed.”

Inspecting the bodies, I found that they were still breathing, as it was the protocol Thorn and I set when ambushing our foes. More often than not, people were more useful alive. It allowed us ti to identify them before deciding on the appropriate follow-up option.

We continued heading further into the penthouse, toward the owner’s bedroom. We soon rounded a corner where we could hear a conversation nearby.

“---our shift, want to go to the Neon District?”

“Ehh…Why not? We’ve been racking up overti these past few days. I could blow so credits.”

“Now we’re talking. Alfred has been down our throats with the protocols and infrared caras. It’s high ti you co blow so steam off with .”

“Yeah…when is that bastard Ed coming back from his hush-hush mission anyway? He should co as well.”

“No clue. I tried asking Alfred in a roundabout way, but he didn’t reveal anything.”

“He’s always been a tight a—” I didn’t let the man finish his sentence as I put him in a rear naked choke.

His friend beside him turned in surprise at the sight, but before he could scream, Thorne took care of him.

With the guards taken care of, the only obstacle that remained was the door to the master bedroom. It seed like Jas had so sense of self-preservation. His room was more like a large safe, locked behind a biotric scanner.

Thorne moved up and connected a terminal to the back panel of the scanner. A mont later, Claire’s voice rang out in my head.

“Thanks for the wait, guys! This is worse than expected. That impressive-looking lock still used the default software it ca with, which is sothing accessible to the public. It’s open now. Tell our friend I say hi.”

The door audibly clicked open as it was unlocked. The light from the hallway leaked into the dark room.

“...Alfred? What’s going on?” Our friend, Jas, nervously said from his bed. Despite the lack of light, my implants helped make out the movent of his throat from swallowing.

We made our way into the room and closed the door behind us to Jas’s panic. He jumped up from his bed and reached for the drawer of the nightstand beside him. He held up a gun that resembled a collector’s revolver. From its markings, I could tell it was from Premier Arms, just like my weapons, which ant it was probably an electromagnetically propelled weapon of so sort.

He grew more nervous and confused as he realized there was no one by the door. He frantically looked around the room and found only himself.

“Jasper, Gran, are you there?” He scread out.

When he found no response, he quickly drew another item from the drawer, a pair of glasses, and wore them before taking a scan of his room.

Having seen enough, I lunged toward him, slapped his gun out of his hand, and shoved him into his bed face-first.

“Hey there, Jas, guess which of your friends ca for a surprise visit?” His struggle to get up intensified, “Now, now. Calm down Jas, we’re all friends here.”

“Get off . Do you have any idea who I am?! You’re so dead! You and all your loved ones.”

“Oh, are you convincing to tie up loose ends right now?” I gestured to Thorne for his gun, which I then racked right next to his ear and pressed it against the back of his head.

My fancy guns were cool and all, but too bad I can’t rack them to make this iconic sound.

“Stop, stop! I’ll give you way more than what you’re getting paid right now. Just let go. “

“Sure, transfer so credits from your account to this one,” I imdiately replied.

Who in their right mind will pass up on free money?

The temporary account I set up soon received a transfer of fifty thousand credits.

“So you think fifty thousand is way more than what I’m getting paid? You’re pretty cheap for a CEO, don’t you think?”

“That’s all I can move right now, trust ! Let go and I’ll wire more to you later.”

“Don’t worry about that. I didn’t co here for the credits anyway.”

“What?” He tried to turn back toward , but I shoved his face harder back into the bed.

“You tried to attack the wrong people. This isn’t an issue you can buy your way out of, understand?” Once he heard my words, his struggle re-ignited and was stronger than before.

“Calm down Jas, we’re not unreasonable people, we talk reason, that’s why you’re alive and chatting with us right now.”

“What do you want?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? You sneaked into my ho and pinned to my bed for nothing?”

“We ca here today to just warn you, Jas. Leave the camouflage cybernetic business and stay in your own lane, making projectors or whatever, before anything unfortunate happens.”

“Is that a threat!?”

“Yes, it is. Think carefully now, we can always find you again and have another chat next ti, though I doubt we’d be as friendly. It’s your choice.” He fell silent.

I brought out the bracelet restrainers and put them on Jas before whispering to him one final ti, “We’ll always be watching.”

On my way out of the room, I threw down a milkshake from my pack on a nearby desk. It may have lted by now, so he’ll have to do with what he’s got.

I hope he enjoys my handpicked gift. It’s from the place I have constantly been ordering from recently.

After our visit, we returned to the clinic and disbanded, leaving only one security team on the premises, along with , Thorne, and Claire. We set up a few hidden caras at Jas’s place just in case of imdiate retaliation. It probably won’t last once he makes a clean sweep of the house, but it allowed us to see his imdiate reaction.

“Are you really sure we should let them go?” Claire asked as she munched on so peanuts.

“Yeah, it’ll be hard to root them out when their family is scattered around the world. We don’t have that kind of reach. Rather than fight a war with them, it’ll do us more good if Jas listens and backs off. Besides, who knows if they have so insurance that had a revenge clause or sothing, can’t be too careful with these corpos.”

“But you had to let all his n go too. He’s got the manpower to retaliate at any mont now, you know?”

“He always can. We just have to keep our eyes open. There’s no point killing all his employees, he’ll just hire new ones. Also, I’d rather not murder so poor worker doing their job. There’s enough garbage around for to clean up that I can’t get to yet.”

“Fine, but we should prepare for the worst-case scenarios.”

“That was the plan. We’ll need to earn more first to upgrade our security and hire more people. In the anti, we’ll be more careful.” I looked to Thorne, who nodded back.

With our conversation finished and we didn’t spot anything unusual with Jas, I returned to my workshop now that I had so ti.

I wanted to study the active camouflage Hathway Corporation had put together as I could only tell that the tech base for it was an entirely different approach to how I did it, even though it perford similarly.

Their version had several synchronized small wide-view lenses that were installed around the body to project images of the surroundings to create the effect, as opposed to my nanomachine-based thod. If I could adopt so of their tech onto the nanomachines, I could increase the efficiency of my nanomachines, allowing for the sa effect with less of them, which in turn lowered the costs.

After a detailed breakdown, it turns out the main things I could replicate were their lenses and the software their implant used to accompany them to keep multiple lenses in sync, though it will take so trial and error.

Without the original blueprint or anything, it took a full week until I could reproduce lenses that could perform at 90% of the original. It then took another week before I got a consistent enough production thod.

The most fortuitous thing to co from the new production thod was that it was possible to use the product of my old design as materials with minimal loss, which further kept my costs down.

I planned to reduce the price slightly but my target market, who would spend on stealth tech, weren’t ones to cheap out on equipnt that their life depended on. It would increase my margins per unit as a result.

“Our existing stock has been changed to the updated version, and the next shipnt is on schedule. You have a eting with Delnar dical’s representative scheduled in thirty minutes and one with State Care Clinics at 4:00 PM today,” Claire faithfully recited from her terminal.

“Got it. I’ll leave things here to you then,” I said, as I started packing away so samples of our product into a briefcase.

“...Are you sure you don’t want to sell our better model, or at least a watered-down version of it?”

I inspected the sample one last ti before packing it away, “Claire, our latest model contains so tech that we will want to keep to ourselves, indefinitely.”

“Why can’t we just patent it and sell a downgraded version? It’ll be hard to keep it a secret forever.”

“Ha, a patent won’t solve anything. It’s not a monetary concern but a security one. You can see from just the recent incident with Hathway, leaking their tech allowed us to prepare counterasures. A watered-down version will still have the sa operating principle that others can extrapolate. We’re only going to sell the basic version where it doesn’t matter to us if everyone got a hold of it.”

“Okay, okay, just a suggestion. I got things to do. See you later,” She said and quickly exited my workshop.

She was right in that it was hard to keep our tech a secret, but everyone had that sa issue. I already installed a self-destruct sequence in the new cybernetic we gave out to our security team. It had several trigger conditions, such as disassembly, the death of the user, or manual activation. Even then, it won’t be perfect. I’ll just have to keep updating the anti-theft asures and monitor closely.

I arrived at the eting place, which was one of Delnar dical’s nearby cybernetic clinics, with fifteen minutes to spare. They were a middle-sized corporation and had various dical facilities besides cybernetic clinics, but that wasn’t relevant to today.

The receptionist had helpfully guided towards a eting room on the floor above, where a middle-aged woman was already waiting inside.

She was dressed neatly in formal business wear with subdued colors as expected of a typical corpo and was sitting relaxed while she watched enter. Standing beside her was a younger woman who was bent over, whispering sothing into her ear.

“Welco Mr. Halls, I am Ida reth. I know it’s a little early, but why don’t we jump straight into it since you are here already? I believe you have a product you would like us to carry in our clinics?”

“That’s right, our company has recently launched a new cybernetic, the HSU-003 ‘Shade’.”