#mesh network

Splinters sprayed outward from the door frame, followed by the sole of a black steel-toed boot. You snapped your head up from the desk, taking in the scene as quickly as your panic-stricken mind could process it.

You’d fallen asleep. You’d deployed the exploit and you had fallen asleep. A quick glance at your laptop screen showed the tail end of the exploit successful message, and a hundred lines after that warning you of the reverse trace on your IP. That quick glance was all you got before the machine exploded in a shower of sparks and flying mechanical debris. Paradoxically, the sound of the gun going off only happened after you registered this. You could still feel the shift in the air from where the bullet had zipped past over your hands. You could taste the gunpowder, the fiery ozone discharge of the weapon, and you could feel its power in the throb deep in your ears. 

The ringing in your head made the world move in a stunned sort of superimposed replay as you turned to face the intruder.

She stood tall in the doorframe. She hadn’t moved more than a single step into your shitty apartment, and you couldn’t blame her. She was dressed in all black, the coat pulling from her body to reveal a rich fiery orange lining. As she lowered her hand and the gun, nothing shook. It was possible that the gun itself didn’t dare recoil against her palm. Her hair lay in one thick black braid over one shoulder, leading up to a head bearing an expression so icy you felt the room grow cold just from meeting her eyes.

She spoke. Her lips formed words nicely, you thought in the back of your mind.

You couldn’t hear her; the single gunshot was still ringing in your ears. What? You asked her, feeling like you were trying to speak underwater.

She finally stalked forward, gun at her side but still in her hand. You cringed away, drawing your hands up in a sign of surrender, every survival instinct you had now gone. You could hear the tone of her voice as she spoke this time; sharp, clipped. You flinched away like she’d fired another shot, and she looked almost disappointed at your reaction.

Before you could register what she was doing, she had your hands zip-tied together in front of you and held up what looked like a travel perfume aerosolizer. What?? You asked again.

She shook her head and sighed, pocketing it but not the gun. With the weapon, she gestured for you to walk out the door. You spared a look at your decimated laptop, by all accounts the only thing you owned, and decided to follow orders.

If you could see her face then, perhaps you would have seen a smile.

You were taken down the familiar flight of stairs to the back alley of your building and shoved shoulder-first into the trunk of a car. Once again, survival instinct fled you, and you couldn’t help but wonder if you were still dozing off at your workstation, dreaming about dangerously beautiful women with dangerously precise trigger discipline.

She’d only had to kick in your door once.

She’d only had to fire the gun once.

She’d only had to ask you to come once.

You weren’t sure if that was a slight on yourself, or a point in her favor.

##

The car didn’t stop making twists and turns for over an hour. You didn’t know the feel of The City from car rides; you knew it from rattling rail transit and cracked concrete underfoot. She drove like you had a life to get back to. At some point, you fell asleep again, because when she opened the trunk, she only had to do it once to wake you up again. Looking up at her, you blinked in the sudden light.

Wherever you were, the light cast a golden glow over the side of her face, highlighting a silvery scar high on her cheek. You could see into her coat, see the holstered gun and the car keys in her hand a moment before you were hauled up and over the lip of the trunk. You watched the world go by from upside-down, hanging over the woman’s shoulder and too stunned to move. “Uh?” you said, earning you a spank on the ass. “UH?!” you continued.

“Quiet.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Manners,” she said, drawing it out in a sing-song voice that made your spine shiver. “I like it.”

You knew that now was the most inconvenient time to get horny. That revelation lasted you all of twenty seconds before you were dumped back onto your feet, allowing you a brief moment where you stood on two feet before being launched into the arms of yet another tall, gorgeous person dressed in black.

He had the softest eyes you’d ever seen, but the set of his jaw and the jagged scar over his nose told you he was made of something much more dangerous than his eyes wanted you to believe. The all-black suit he wore only added to the image you were forming of him, depth in all things but murky and inky and unfathomable to the naked eye. He pulled his eyes from you and looked at the woman.

“What’s this?” He asked, his voice a raspy rumble that reminded you of heat lightning, summer storms and the quiet preceding them.

“This one has a meeting with the boss.”

Her words were chosen carefully, you could tell from the man’s immediate reaction. His hand, huge and strong and warm, wrapped around your arm and pulled you down the hall to a bank of elevators. He didn’t even have to punch the button before the heavy metallic doors slid open, revealing a mirrored box that showed a million images of its contents: a man and his unlucky charge.

He didn’t let you go once for the entire ride up, eyes focused straight ahead and not even daring to meet yours in the reflection.

“What’s going on?” You whispered, hoping he would give you at least a simple answer. You considered covering your ass for a moment, in case he was as inclined as the woman was toward your questions.

To your surprise, he didn’t spank you for asking a question. Instead, his eyes met yours in the mirror for the barest of moments. “Most likely a job interview.”

You weren’t sure if he was joking or not. You couldn’t tell, nor could you think about it any longer, because the doors were opening on an unnumbered floor. The digits hadn’t gone up since 65, but you’d still felt the elevator moving upward.

Wherever you were going, it was definitely off the books.

The floors were a sleek black marble, with veins of silver and gold throughout, the grout between the large slabs glittering black in the low evening lights. Outside the large, floor-to-ceiling windows, The City flickered in the distance, the pier standing as a barrier between this building and the rest. No wonder you had no bearing on where you were; you were at the city limits. You’d never even lived outside of—

The hand around your arm moved to your shoulders, resting over your jacket and ready to grab the material in case you ran. You fought the urge to twist at the zip ties and make his job more difficult. The man led you down a few turns and up a set of illuminated glass stairs so sturdy they sounded like steel as you walked over them. Everywhere you looked was tinged with dark luxury and fine minimalism, every corner radiating expensive and curated. You, by contrast, felt out of place with every growing second you remained in its walls.

You came to a stop outside an oak door closing behind a tall, salt-and-pepper-haired man with sharp features and a loose dark red tie around his neck. He looked a little haggard, some kind of scar marring the line of his neck and his stubbly facial hair.

“Marshal. He in?”

“You gotta stop calling me that,” the man (Marshal?) said, his voice twanging with an accent definitely not from around these parts. “And he’s in, but he ain’t taking any more business today.”

“This business has made itself important,” your escort said, hand coming up to rest on your shoulder with a heavy weight that you felt even in the pit of your stomach.

“Leave it for the morning, Din,” a voice came from inside the still-cracked door of the office. Another accent unfamiliar to The City. It almost… sang, in a way, though even from here you could hear how tired the speaker was. “Put her up in a room.”

Your escort - Din - hesitated for a moment before nodding at the other man. “See you later, Cobb.”

“Til our paths cross.”

Then he was gone, leaving you and Din in the hallway staring after him. Your eyes, curious, drifted to the heavy doors, with their black hardware and high-gloss lacquer you were anxious to breathe too close to. “Come on,” Din said, hand prodding you forward, past the door and down yet another hall.

He stopped you in front of a door bearing no markings from the rest to differentiate it, but he produced a keycard, tapping it against a mechanism that had it swinging open. In you went, discovering the large, simple bed and basic dwelling features, leading you to believe—

“Is this a hotel?” You asked, your hundredth question of the night.

In a flash, there was a knife, then there were no more zip-ties. The weapon was gone before you could blink. 

“Take a shower. Get some sleep. I’ll get you something to eat, but be awake at seven.”

He closed the door with you still inside, and you watched the handle on your side suck into the door, effectively locking you in with no way to get out.

Fuck.

Paralyzing fear gave way to paralyzing boredom, and your exploration of the room revealed no windows, a bathroom with no doors, grates over vents too small to fit through, and no drafts behind the large mirror in the bathroom. They’d thought of everything for this luxury prison cell.

The shampoo smelled really nice though.

Like mint and rosemary. Some kind of citrus, too. Your hair smelled like a really nice roast chicken.

After your shower, you found a set of clean sweatpants and a shirt which you changed into, not wanting to ruin your sparkly clean self with questionably-clean clothes. You slept with the lights on, tossing and turning until the clock hit 0700 on the nightstand.

It had left you a lot of time to think over the events that had gotten you to this point, and attempt to answer some questions on your own.

##

“The tech team is hemorrhaging excuses,” Fennec said over her cappuccino, frowning at her tablet as she shared breakfast with Din. Boba was still swimming in the lap pool outside; said it woke him up more than any hot drink ever would.

“They don’t want to say they were inadequate,” Din said insightfully. When the security team had failed them in La Città several months back, they’d been made an example of for daring to shirk the duties of their job. Cobb, Din, and Fennec had been left to pick up the pieces, and Boba had nearly died. 

It was no surprise the tech team was reluctant to admit their faults.

“They don’t have to say it, we know it already,” Fennec scoffed. “She got into our finance server in like twenty minutes, she cut through the code like a hot knife through butter, from what I understand.”

“I can’t tell if that’s admiration or contempt,” Din said dryly.

“Six of one, half a dozen of the other,” Fennec shrugged and stood up. “How do you think today’s gonna go for her?”

Din’s face clouded darkly, and Fennec didn’t voice what she was feeling: Din was doing it again, letting his big heart control his principles.

“That’s up to Boba. I just hope he’s in a good mood.”

“He almost lost all of his digital banking assets to a kitten in her pajamas. I don’t think he will be.”

##

Two sharp knocks at the door woke you from your half-doze. You jerked awake, scrambling to take in your surroundings and remember what had happened to get you there. The room was still lit by the side-table lamps, low and warm despite the chill in your body. This place had to be a hotel, always chilled too cold for comfort.

The sound of the door unlocking and opening brought you to a sitting position in bed. You knew you would be useless in a fight against your captors, so you sat still and tried to look as defenseless as possible, as if that would inspire mercy to your sentence.

Din rounded the corner to see you, holding a tray which he set down on the desk against the wall. “Good, you’re awake,” he said, pouring a cup of water before standing back. “Eat, then we’ll get started.”

Your appetite hadn’t quite manifested, despite the amazing-smelling food before you. Luckily, Din didn’t call you on it, and when you said you were finished, he took the tray and left. At the door stood the woman who had captured you. You found yourself struck with fear, the memory of her gun pointed toward you and the sharp jut of her shoulder in your gut playing on repeat.

She nodded her head to the left, encouraging you to follow before the door swung closed.

She wore the same style of tight, high-waisted pants she had on the day before, but instead of the long angular coat, she wore a black button-down with the sleeves rolled and a pair of chunky black boots. Her hair remained in the tight, corded braid you’d last seen her with, though this time with two slim locks of dark hair in front of her face.

Fuck, why did she have to be so beautiful?

She led you to the oak-doored office you and Din had met Cobb at yesterday, but instead of being turned away, she led you inside.

The office was symmetrical and done in a very fine multitonal dark brown and black scheme, deep wood stains and geometric patterns lining the walls all the way to the wide windows, floor-to-ceiling like the rest of the place. The brightness of the morning over the ocean water made you wince, so used to being inside or in the dark. As a result, it took you a moment to make out the edges of the figure standing before the windows, hands clasped behind his back and cutting a fine silhouette against the daybreak.

“Sit,” the woman said, pointing you to the singular chair before a large desk made of some kind of pitch-black wood you couldn’t recognize. So much of the luxury in this place was lost on you. Until a few months ago, you thought plywood just grew like that.

Things stayed quiet in the room for several long minutes, the sound of your breathing seemingly too loud for the tension. You felt like you did at the foster house, when the adults wanted you to fess up to doing something wrong before they lectured you about it.

There was no use trying to get ahead of what you’d done. You’d been doing blackhat cracking and splicing for a long time by this point, self-taught and self-made after years of fighting just to live. Things were going to be different after this exploit. You were going to skim the top 0.005% off every other account on that server and you would let yourself eat two meals a day with it.

Of course, when you realized that the top 0.005% of every other account in that server would equate to eating twenty-thousand meals a day, you should have known there would be repercussions from your little smash-and-grab.

Attempted smash-and-grab. Your door had been smashed, you had been grabbed, and now you were here.

“My cybersecurity team, as well as my investigators, cannot seem to find anything on you, black@.” The mention of your ‘sona made you tense up, your jaw clenching. “You haven’t paid taxes ever in your life, you have no civic licenses, you’ve never held a job, even your apartment has been sublet so many times no prosecutor would ever turn an eye on it. I am very used to making people disappear, but it seems like you yourself,” the man turned as he spoke. “Never existed.”

He was not a tall man, compared to Din, but he still was a big man in that he took up space in the room. He dominated your entire field of vision like thick snow over a windscreen, and his eyes, piercing brown-almost-black, spoke winter winds into your composure. This was a scary man, you knew. He was dangerous and he had assets and probably dealt in all manner of terrifying things and—

Oh fuck was he attractive.

“Fosters slip through the cracks all the time.” You winced openly as your mouth took a running start ahead of your mind. You heard a scoff from the back corner where the woman sat.

“A fact I’m well aware of,” the man said, turning fully to face you now. His suit was a dark charcoal gray, with a green-and-red pocket square and gold cufflinks glinting at you when he planted his hands on the table. “And one my enemies are beginning to learn. Who hired you, then? The Hutts? The Pykes? You’re not corporate enough to be a New Republican splicer.”

You made a face. You’d interacted with a few New Reps on the web, they were squares from the first keystroke.

“Definitely not CPD,” the man said, deciphering something in your distaste. You felt your face flush at the attention he gave your feelings, his eyes thawing with amusement as he looked you over.

“Hutts and Pykes pay their lackeys. She wasn’t on a payroll,” the woman said from the back.

“I’m not working for anyone, I just needed some grocery money—”

“And you thought you’d steal from me?” The man’s voice hadn’t raised, but the projection echoed off the fine furniture and floors as if he’d shouted it.

You certainly flinched like he had.

“I didn’t know y-you were uh, I was gonna change the scrape when I saw it, I didn’t want to—”

“You opened up a hole in my security so large I could walk a bantha through it blind,” he said.

“I don’t know what a bantha is.”

“You—what.”

“It’s a metaphor.”

“I know it’s a metaphor—”

“Quit being facetious, girl.” The man rounded the desk and crossed his arms over his thick chest. “What are we doing to do with you?”

Your heart hammered its way up into your throat, and tears filled your waterline, anxiety spiraling away from you at the open threat. You wanted to shake your head, plead for any scrap of mercy, but you could hardly see straight.

“Let her fix it.”

The woman’s voice broke through your psyche like she’d broken down your door (again), stunning you enough to turn in your seat to look at her.

“What do you mean, Fennec?” The man said.

“I mean, let her fix the security. She broke it, she bought in. I’m sure she’ll be able to find other vulnerabilities while she’s in there. If she doesn’t do it, or finds a way to betray us, we can take care of her the usual way. We aren’t known to waste a good set of skills, Boba.”

Their names glided over your head like water over river stones. You turned to look at the man again, eyes wide as he took in the proposition. He looked you over, assessing you with a frown that belied more consideration than he’d expected to have to give.

“Would you do it?” He asked you.

“Yes, sir,” you breathed instantly. “I would.”

Something jumped in his expression, something warmer than the ice in his eyes, as if impacting glaciers could produce a spark. 

You’d surprised him.