After only a few days’ wait, Krahe could count among her possessions a somewhat portable sort-of-computer, customized for security and equipped with what was functionally an aftermarket firmware and operating system. It came inside an unbranded, reinforced, and warded suitcase, which had extra space for a spare thaumine canister and several memstes. The cogen’s internals resembled a mechanical ribcage filled by countless armatures, the spine being a series of interlocking “memstes,” creating a modur operating system. It had nearly a dozen cable ports of varying shapes and sizes, as well as a port for a solid-state DD battery and a thaumine tank.
The cogen’s controls were best described as “cyberdeck meets typewriter.” Besides the unmistakably typewriter-esq keyboard, it offered a hovering trackball in pce of a mouse and an outright direct-to-skull — or rather, direct-to-soul — plug cable, utilising the same quasi-voidkey connection methods that Krahe had up until now only experienced under the knife.
Bit by bit, Krahe began digging into the archive. An entire subculture unfolded before her through Nozar’s intel, with its own social conventions and ideals, even an idea vaguely akin to chivalry. Unsurprisingly, those who worked within the soulbeast-hunting sphere tended to have a disproportionate amount of soulbeast grafts, and vastly superior equipment overall for their rank, both by sheer virtue of access to materials. There was an undeniable degree of survivorship bias, of course — few stuck around for long, and of those who did, not many lived long enough to gather a substantial equipment. If working as a contractor was akin to becoming a pre-industrial sailor, then joining a soulbeast-hunting caravan or becoming a tracker was akin to joining up with a whaling vessel in that era.
The sheer volume of information she had to digest proved to be daunting even with the Decoction of Mind’s Dawn aiding her, and before long, day turned to night. Having run up against the decoction’s dosage limit, Krahe took a break… And as she sat there, smoking, she couldn’t help but feel a sense of foreboding in the air. Something was wrong. She scoured her surroundings, double and triple-checked all her safety-measures, and, finding nothing wrong, became even more deeply disconcerted. A strange static licked her skin. Before long, however, the feeling passed.
Several days ter, Krahe was stuck — not by any fault of her own, and not in any matter of the arcane. It was, instead, bureaucracy. In her effort to start her own small agency, she had to go through the secur government, and somehow, by some terribly convenient coincidence, it seemed that everything was going wrong with her paperwork, despite having made absolutely sure it was bulletproof. The first reason she didn’t bend her full efforts to resolving the impasse by any means necessary was that everything was still within the official timeframe for the paperwork to be processed. The second reason was that she was already busy setting up everything for the soulbeast hunt and going through the Lost Sun Society’s records on eidolon evolution rituals. In short, she was stretching herself very thin, and her paperwork getting deyed wasn’t at the top of her priority list.
As the days passed, becoming a week, and then a second, Krahe noticed something. The same people, coincidentally showing up at public pces she frequented. They weren’t always the same in the same pce, and didn’t always show up simultaneously, and sometimes, they even went through the effort of changing how they looked, but they faltered in key ways. A whole new outfit or a wig wouldn’t do anything if you wore the same very recognizable rings, or didn’t cover up a unique tattoo. They were like agents provocateurs trying to blend into a protest while still wearing their company-issue smartgsses and using ultra-generic — thusly suspicious — network IDs. Stooges never learned. It wasn’t long before she caught a gnce of something that confirmed who they were with. The Silversword Agency. It was a pendant one of them wore, and the mark of a Silver Slip Key on the side of another one’s shaved head. The question was: Why? The obvious answer was that someone contracted the agency, as it was, after all, the single rgest agency in Audunpoint. However, a second possibility remained. Brizogia Rasug al-Imuzat, the woman who owned the mansio on Mirzaii 2, who had gone to every possible legal avenue of shing out at the church. Were this Megacity Gamma, Krahe was certain she would have seen a number of random news outlets taking Brizogia’s side, using suspiciously consistent verbiage. It was Nozar’s intel dossier regarding Krahe that made her lean strongly towards the second possibility, as it detailed a number of efforts to find out who she was, where she lived, and how to contact her — and Brizogia had gone to the greatest lengths of all. The Kristoffen Heavy Ironworks were a close second, because they wanted her to promote the Bck Sun Coupler for them, offering various monetary compensation and full access to the system and all its successors. In short, they wanted to get her as a test pilot, doubtlessly because of the system’s teething problems and ck of testers. She was certain the Ironworks would happily publicize what she did using the Bck Sun Coupler, using it as marketing for the prototype. In fact, she didn’t doubt that they had already done just that to some extent, considering enough information leaked that they even knew of the Bck Sun’s use during the raid. Such was the cost of leaving survivors. The dossier mentioned quite a few others who had tried to get information on her, of course, but these two were the most notable instances. The Dead Night Tiger Agency seemed interested in her, but, true to their enigmatic reputation, that was as far as Nozar’s dossier went.
For the time being, her stalkers were the problem that needed to be dealt with. She decided to use them. After having her breakfast at a bakery, she purposely stared at the bald-headed stalker until he noticed. Then, just as he became armed, she looked down at a memste she had left on the table, and covered it with her empty coffee cup. Looking back up at him, she saw a degree of understanding in his eyes. He didn’t make a move until after she had left. Not smart enough to blend in properly, but at least he understood this much. Upon that memste was a message, establishing an alleyway across the street as a dead-drop point for communications — specifically, a gap in the mortar below a brick that Krahe had scraped an unassuming symbol into.
Akaso
