"Oh, you know, marketing stuff: Advertising campaigns, mostly the old fashioned kind. I'm in acquisition and mostly prepare pitches and client meetings. I like it, because I get to meet people in real life. At least most of the time - some of those clients can become really grabby.

Well, if you are interested, I can give you the number of our HR department. I hope that helps. You can refer me - Annita Gilbert - as a contact.

It must be hard to come from so far away to Seattle. Do you miss the kangaroos and the koalas?"
Annita asked with a sympathetic look on her face.

Anna jumps when bnc grabs her buttocks and lets out a surprised "oh" voice. She does not otherwise react then, just hugs bnc's back as they slowly walk to the coffee. She grins when Annita confuses Austria with Australia - but does not correct her. Instead, she drinks her coffee a bit amused by the conversation.

She asks "Do you think that they'll have a dress code in Matrix security? I can't wait to get Ruthi into a decent suit."

"Hah, you wish. Most of the time they stay at home in their pajamas and do tele-presence. Last time I saw Darrel in a suit was when he had to apply for his job.
I think they want to save on office space. He certainly enjoys working from home."
Annita replied.

"Yeah, like my own mom. Not to forget the Awakened Tasmanian devils, the woolagaroos and those bloody Aboriginee rebels."
She pauses, adding a charming smile. "The UCAS are a beautiful country. I'm glad I live hear, and wouldn't want to be any other place.

Darrel's your boyfriend, I take it? What's he working at?"

"Oh Darrel always likes to be mysterious about his work and how sensitive it all is. But seriously, how sensitive can it be if you are lying in your sweatpants on your sofa and your are to lazy to get out of VR to get something to eat. Honest to god, he has a coffee sip drip into his mouth. At least he has set up a medical monitor that reminds him to use the bathroom once in a while.

In my opinion he is doing matrix games and pretends that he is present at his work. He is always going on about cybercombat strategies - whatever that is.
I really don't see why he can't just use AR like normal people. But he likes his toys. He honestly has four different commlinks and two of those decks lying around at all times. He even gives them names, like Agents Adam and Agent Bernie."
Annita replied while taking a big gulp from her super sweet soycaf.

bnc smiles knowingly. "You shouldn't make fun of him. Well, maybe you should, but not in front of a possible workmate"
She winks. "My honey's just the same. You should see those eyes rolling when I go on about cybercombat targetting distribution tactics or patrol IC target identification protocols. I mean, they are fascinating if you get to the core. What are your favorites?"
She grins briefly at Anna, before turning her attention back to the spider's girl.

Anna giggled slightly "Four comlinks?! wow.
"I wouldn't know - I usually do my fingernails when Rutti speaks about cyber stuff. ". She places her hand on the table, flashing the well maintained and freshly painted fingernails.

Annita took another gulp from her soycaf - the true sign of a caf-addict, before answering:
"Well, I'm happy to know that we aren't the only couple with problems like that. But yeah, as I said, he loves his toys. I've always got to be careful when I go into his flat. He managed to turn a crawler drone into some kind of dog. Typical, really, instead of getting a real dog friend, he builds a drone that acts like a watch dog. Even gave it teeth that act like a taser. Needless to mention I got a nasty shock the first time I met this thing. He had to do a lot to make up for that prank."

bnc frowns. "Okay, this is something even I find weird."
She grins to herself. "But he does control that dog himself rather than having an auto-pilot steer it, I hope? I mean, you don't enter the room to bring him a cake and end up torn to pieces and roasted by the taser, do you?
And what exactly does her need so many commlinks for? I mean, I'm in the biz, too, but I can do everything with a single dingle."

"No, that's just it - he says a friend in the military got him some kind of pilot upgrade thingy, so the thing would be as smart or smarter than a dog. He says it's safer if he can't control it over the matrix. Which, you know, is a bit terrifying. By now it recognizes me quite well, except for the one time I got myself styled up with hair extensions and that glitter make-up. Thank god he told me the stop word. I have to admit, though, a burglar would have a pretty hard time against it.

He says he needs the links just in case his main gear gets bricked or when he wants to bring his "agents" with him. I never understood that to be honest - wouldn't a surge protector be enough to prevent anything happening to his computers?"

bnc laughs. "Oh? Why's that? What did he pick for a passphrase? Something like 'flamboyance' or 'Sesam, öffne dich!'?"


"Your Darrel's right about that. A surge protector might help in some cases, but it really doesn't prevent you from getting bricked from the inside. Also, it won't be able to defend you against people hacking your devices and shutting them down. Or turning them against yourself."

bnc's attempt to non-nonchalantly breach Darrel's sophisticated defense system hung for a precarious second in the air. Anna had to suppress the urge to stop breathing and act as if that was just another bit of gossip that three young women exchanged over a cup of soycaf.
Annita swallowed her drink and replied:
"Oh no, nothing so corny. Just a short "Laputa Machine" will stop it... Oh sorry, I really shouldn't have said that. Just forget about it.

Anyway, I need to get home. But thanks for the lovely conversation. Give me a call if you get the job.
Come Snoops, say goodbye to Zelda.
See you."

Anna remained silent and placed her hand at bnc's hip. She replied, "It was really nice talking to you Annita!"

"Wait!", bnc cries after, "Who do I have to ask for the job? Can I refer to you?"

Once that's done, bnc orders something highly alcoholic for both of them. A Planter's Punch, if they have one.
"Cheers!", bnc says, "To your fuckin' amazing magic. I'll kiss you if you Sustain it just another hour..."

"Oh, sure, I almost forgot."
With a quick gesture to her AR display she beamed bnc a contact number and added her own name for reference.

Once she is gone, a look at the AR map shows that the strongest intoxicant this joint has to offer is an Irish soycaf with 40% synthehol.

"Irish Soykaff it is... You did good girlfriend."

@Team>>So when do we pay Spider and his dogbot a visit?

>>Can we adopt his dog, too?

The waitress delivers the Irish drinks with some cream, Anna clicks hers toward bnc's and says "Cheers!"

she is surprised that Slobbertooth already knows the summary of the conversation and texts back ">> Wait, how? Do you have a microphone or something on Zelda... ? "

>>I told you I used her for magic power, didn't I?"

bnc is very cautious with the cream and insists on it to be lactose free. She raises her cup, "Nastrovje!" and takes a sip.

And almost spits it out again at the look of Anna's face. "I updated the info wall, honey.
That spell of yours is highly dangerous..."

Mike simply chimed in: <<Laser-mic on your position. Wouldn't be very gentlemanly if we let you ladies go out without a decent shadow.

By the way, good work, the boss just sent me a message he seems to have dug up a place where we can train on a model of the bank. Kite is rigging up mock guards with some cheap anthro drones. Flatline and Krestov will be your opposition.
Details when you are back at base.>>

Anna giggled "You guys are way ahead of me with her direct connection and super microphones. I am impressed... we'll be shortly at the safehouse once we finish our victory drink." Anna grinned at bnc "Dangerous to me, you mean." She slowly sipped from her drink, unaccustomed to its taste. Drinking was more of a late night thing for her - not with the coffee.

Slobber turned off his imagined link with Zelda and then started making sure his things were together for these mock runs through the robbery.

After toasting to Anna und drinking up the Irish coffee, bnc and Anna return to the base.

When the team arrived back at the base, Mike began packing a container.
"Alright, the boss says we are going to Snohomish. Best wear some boots - it's cold and wet out there."

The drive took almost an hour and at its destination the team found what could best be described as an old barn. It was large - like a hangar - and when Mike pulled up before it the team could see the large sliding gates that once upon a time were used by farming machines.
Flatline awaited them.
"I've got some soycaf going. Dr. Schmitt and Krestov are just about finished. This model will use AR to simulate the interior. Does everyone have a trode net?"

"Both my helmets have Trode nets if someone needs to borrow one."

As the questions clearly is not directed at bnc, she simply ignores it. Instead, she asks:
"Is there any kind of marker to differentiate what is only fake and what I may acutally attack in the simulation?"

"Yes, in fact, there is." Schmitt had appeared through the door and made a beckoning motion:
"Come on in, it's cold out there and the soycaf is ready."

Inside they found a table that looked like a small buffet with cake, donuts, soycaf and all necessary peripherals to enjoy them.
In the rest of the large hall someone had erected a kind of jungle gym out of lumber and perspecs plates. Three stories high it looked like a particularly elaborate hamster maze.

A ramp led up to the second level where the entrances were located.

"Thanks to the help of Krestov and some of Flatline's stronger spirits we now have a pretty accurate representation of the bank building.
The lowest level is the vault. The second level represents the banks official business area and the top level is the place where offices and the security center is located.
As for differentiating between simulation and hack-objectives: Everything you are supposed to hack is running normally, the simulated bits are running silent.
We have some crawler drones that simulate people walking around. I have cheap commlinks with simsense adapters, so you can interact with the AR constructs - just don't try to tackle them.
Each wall and floor has an RFID chip that displays it's part of the environment. The whole thing runs on a rigger console directed by Kite. Flatline will assist me with Watchers and spirits.
The inside of the bank is based on information I acquired over the last several days. It's not 100% recent, especially the top floor, but all in all it should be accurate.

I suggest you familiarize yourself with the place first, before we start to train our plan of action."

Slobber quickly took the position of one of the guard-bots, he pointed towards the door and snapped his fingers, and sprinted towards the security room. He simulated grabbing a rifle and running back into the main room to get a timing for how long it would take for security to respond. After that he pulled out his HK-227, removed the magazine and made sure it was unloaded, and began taking different entrance points through the bank to check angles. While he did he asked Schmidt a few technical questions.

"How quickly would gas grenades fill up the atrium? Do we know what kind of PPE the security team has? Do we have any idea what kinds of magical wards are in place to detect spirit intrusions after they had the one come up through the floor?"

Slobber noticed that he had to overcome three doors in total to get into the security room: The back entrance, the door for the staircase and the door of the security room. Even unlocked it took him 40 seconds to reach the weapons locker. From a tactical point of view the bank contained a lot of blind corners, that made a firefight pretty much a melee.

Schmidt looked through his notes as he answered:
"On normal guard duty they carry only lightly armored uniforms with electricity resistant inserts, integrated bio-monitors and micro transceivers. In an emergency they have access to armor jackets and helmets - electricity and chemical resistant, the helmets have smartlink, flash compensation, low light and IR vision integrated.

For gas to be effective you'd have to sabotage the filters and the air condition first, otherwise a gas grenade would be sucked away within 5 seconds. That said, from a volume standpoint you'd need about three standard doses to fill the complete atrium and about one per room.

The building is warded on its outer walls with patrolling watchers outside and inside. If necessary the wage mage would deploy bound spirits to counter spirits that manage to overcome the barrier. Spirits can't move through the earth itself - what you refer to was the mage that used his matter control powers to tunnel in and conjure a spirit on the inside."

"bnc, would it be possible for you to remotely hack and disable the vent system. I've got a few gas grenades and it may be our best crowd control solution."

"I guess. Depends on whether I find an access point to create a direct connection quick. How tough is the host?"
bnc, too, looks around, comparing it with and adjusting the digital map Schmitt gave them ages go (that is, unless he provides an update himself). She adds severall additional layers to the map, in which she adds information about patrol routes, traps, sensors, hackable gear and cables, locks and so forth.

"The bank has an R7 security host with a 8/7/10/9 ASDF configuration - a pretty tough cookie so to speak. But luckily, the utilities run on a different system - an R5 5/6/8/7 commercial host that takes care of heating, air conditioning, water and electricity for the non-security features.
Locks, cameras and drones run on the security host."

The updated map looked pretty complicated until bnc zoomed in. There were no known traps - if you didn't count self locking doors and taser armed crawler drones.

bnc whistles softly. "Sheesh, this is one mucho malo badass piece of hoe.
Looks like I can rape that vent sys, but I'm gonna need a direct connection if you want me to do anything else reliably. One needs to know one's limits, and there it is."

"Where are the locations she can physically jack-in, and which one will it be easiest for her to reach."

"Do you have a plan or at least entry plan you prefer doc, or are you trusting our decision making there? Don't want to step over toes."

Schmitt replied: "I don't want to impose any preconceived plan on you, but I can give you my thoughts on the matter:
You have Zola's SOK, so you can use the back door with impunity and open any door within the bank at your leisure. If you take out the spider the drones will recognize the SOK as well. The main problem will be the security team patrolling the place, as well as their back up upstairs. Gassing them is a viable solution. Mike can organize the necessary narcoject grenades.
Direct connection to the host will be easiest achieved by attaching a micro wire to one of the cameras. As far as I can see, they are the only exposed parts of the security system - unless you fancy catching a crawler drone or dismantling one of the scanners.
Assuming you manage to gas the operations room and take out the guards without raising any alarms, it should be trivial to make your way down to the vault.
We'll have about 10 minutes until someone notices the lack of response from the bank and sends someone to investigate."

"bnc, do you think you and Anna can get in there and inconspicuously connect to a camera to make it possible. It seems like a viable plan for the moment.

"Also, after the 10 minutes expires we'll likely be dealing with a blood mage, his magically linked adept, and a sociopath tinman. Any thoughts on how to decrease that threat?"

"Inconspicuously? No, I don't think so. I've never even been inside a bank building in my entire life. I'll almost certainly attract attention.
Maybe Anna can. It's not really like you needed any brains for doing that. I can just give her the tech and she'll do perfectly fine. Smiling, displaying fingernails, attaching a cable to a cam. Her sort of thing, really.

About the blood mage. We control the sprinklers, right? What can go wrong?

Jest aside. Most important thing I can think of is a good escape plan. I don't know whether fighting them is really such a good idea. We should be off and gone when they arrive here. Other than that, I suggest we try to bar doors, lay traps, and Summon an army of spirits until we're swimmings balls-high in them."

"Not sure we'll be gone. We'll only have 10 to 20 minutes before a response, and that's if everything goes well.

"What do we know about vault security and how long it will take us to strip it clean?"

Vault
https://pyrophilios.files.wordpress.com/201.../bank-vault.png

Ground
https://pyrophilios.files.wordpress.com/201...bank-ground.png

1st. Floor
https://pyrophilios.files.wordpress.com/2017/11/bank-1st.png


"The Vault is secured through a 50cm thick wall and a corresponding heavy steel door, locked electronically and mechanically.
There is a heavy duty lift that can be used to transport everything to the ground floor and from there out the back door.

The individual locker boxes are easy to break and as long as we have the SOK with us we won't trigger any alarms.
Here, I updated the simulation. That should make it easier to plan your approach."
Schmitt replied.

"Too thick for a monofilament chainsaw and thermite burning bars, then?"

"Nothing is to thick for a mono saw - but it will take a while. Maybe longer than we have." Schmitt replied.

"Probably. Just going through the things we have on hand.

"bnc, got any explosives that could put a dent it in first?"

“Mike has, I suppose. I'll just have to do the maths and see whether explosives will do the job. I'll let you know asap"

Mike replied:
"No problem, just tell me what you need and I'll have the lab cook it up.

But if you don't mind me asking: What exactly do you want to blow up? The vault? You've got the SOK, right? So you can enter the vault at any time, even when the time lock is engaged. That was kind of the whole point of having one of you so dangerously close to Zola, wasn't it?"

Anna replied "How difficult is it to sneak a tiny holdout? The Street line should be enough for me. As for the cameras no problem. Perhaps even buy a safety deposit box for some of our gear?"

Slobber shrugged

"I'll be honest, I forgot, but might as well have a backup plan."


Looking to Anna, 'A tricked out taser can be as, if not more, effective for dealing with a single target than a holdout, and is less likely to cause problems if detected."

"Well their clothes will be non conductive, but indeed if we can smuggle a tasser it is better. "

"To be frank, I must admit that my experience with, erm, establishments like that are limited. But I assume that they won't mind any dau who brings a taser or holdout with them. It's a public building. They'd have to chop my hands off if they try to disarm all people before they get in.
And they're gonna make sure that a taser or holdout will be as useful as candy corn if you are dumb enough to try and rob a bank with it. Except if you're a berserk decker with a cleaning drone, that is."

bnc looks around for someplace to seat, then continues whether she found something or not.
"Righty. We should agree on a basic strategy, I suppose. What's it gonna be: Take your time, blend in and do all this without forcing attraction on us? The ninja approach: quick, sneaky and with socks in our faces? Or get in, seize control by force and make sure we make the elemental bastante rápido?
I'd prefer staying somewhere outside eather way. I'd just hold you up and so."

"As for plan preferences. I suggest we go in chill, fry their ventilation and automated security systems and ability to call for backup. Maybe we can set up a dummy response to make it appear that their team is still responding, and loop their cams so they won't call for pawns or Zola and his men. Once that's in place, we go in hard with gas and stun grenades to neutralize the wageslaves and other bystanders."

Turning to bnc
"So you're going in there. We need you jacked into their systems to hose their Spyder and other matrix security and give us more control of the place.