Social skills interacted with the NPCs in a weird way. Saying that implies that they weren’t weird in the way they normally worked. Putting words in my mouth and controlling my facial expressions should be weird no matter how I looked at it, but I supposed that I had gotten used to it.

  It had taken some experimentation but we figured it out. Better skill totals resulted in extra dialogue options. Better ones. Better deals too. The prices I was offered, buying or selling, were about fifty percent better than what Kyle got. That was underselling [Bargain] considerably. If Kyle didn’t know what the going rate for something was (he was quite knowledgeable about swords and armour) then I could normally expect to pay half of what he did. Or had, since he’d teamed up with me.

  Finn had been the start, but he was only a stepping stone. He didn’t have the contacts we needed to progress to the upper levels, but he did have jobs. Jobs that paid credits, and reputation.

  “We can get it for you,” I told the suited mook. “But not for that price.”

  My skills did still help me find the words, but I had a sneaking suspicion that was because there were humans in the room to look cool in front of. Alone, my skill might have urged me to say. “Bargain. More. More. Meeting.” The dialogue options for the quest-givers were pretty good, but they still defaulted to whichever one was most appropriate, given what you’d said.

  “Whadda you want?” the suit said. “More money?”

  “I do want more money,” I said. “But I want to meet with your boss, as well.”

  He hesitated. Quite a convincing facsimile of doubt and calculation that I might have fallen for were it not for the fact that every mid-level manager hesitated when you tried to climb the ladder. It might have been a stylistic choice on Axel’s part, but I rather thought it was to cover the delay while whatever mini-System he was using checked my reputation with that corporation.

  “You get it back in one piece, he’ll talk to you,” the mook finally said.

  “It’s as good as done,” I said, taking my leave.

  We’d done a few of these missions, enough to iron out the kinks. Borys and I had brainstormed how we thought these missions would differ from regular dungeon runs. So far, the others had been bemused about how accurate our speculations had been.

  We walked into the club where the deal was going to go down. It was pretty similar to some of the other clubs we’d seen so far. There were some different types, but there wasn’t much variation within each type. This one had three stages for girls to dance on, a ring of seating around each stage, and a cordoned-off VIP section for the block bosses or higher to sit in. The girls were mooks, of course, which I thought was missing a trick. If they’d been human, and wearing what those girls were wearing, we’d have had to drag Cloridan and maybe Borys out of each club.

  I sighed when I made out our target. Occupying the centre stage, the traditional bulky aluminium suitcase gleamed under all the spotlights that were pointing at it. It was raised high enough to be clearly visible over the heads of all the surly mooks who were lined up around the stage, making sure that no one got near it.

  I noted Cloridan’s departure. He was already invisible and fully informed of his part of the plan.

  “I need to talk with someone important in Iron Hanuman,” I told the doorkeeper. “I’ve got vital information about Kanzaki-Volkswerk.”

  I had to hand it to Axel, it was a pretty neat trick. All of the mooks had different sets of actions they performed when we were watching. Maybe at other times as well, who knew? When we came in, they were using what you could call the happy set. They were clapping each other on the back, ogling the girls, and slamming down drinks.

  As soon as I said Kanzaki-Volkswerk, they switched to a more nervous set. The girls faltered and changed dances. Cheers turned into suspicious glances around the room and hands went nervously to weapons. It changed the feel of the room, building tension. The doorkeeper grunted and gestured us toward the bar.

  Another thing about these missions is that you could go either way, depending on which corporation you were looking to get in good with.

  “I heard you’ve got something for me?”

  I looked up from my drink, which I hadn’t touched. This was the most well-dressed ganger I’d met yet.

  “I should have known that a deal this big would need a Capo to be involved,” I said. This was a complete lie, as I’d never seen a Capo until this moment. Threat 17 though, and with skills. He was way too dangerous for the first level.

  His eye twitched, perhaps indicating that I hadn’t managed to trigger a dialogue option. “You got something for me or what?”

  “I heard that you’ve got a deal set up with Kanzaki-Volkswerk for tonight,” I said.

  His eyes narrowed. “You’re telling me stuff I already know… tell me how you know that.”

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “I heard it from Fujimoto-Braun,” I said. The mood changed again, switching to something more aggressive. “They know you have their stuff. They’ve sent a team to collect it, and hit KV at the same time.”

  The ganger stared at me as if trying to figure out if I was telling the truth or not. He might have been able to, but it didn’t matter. In finance or politics, lies were a sign of an amateur. Every lie gets found out eventually. Ideally, it gets discovered after it’s too late for the victim to do anything about it. Regardless, other professionals in the market will remember. They’ll do a little bit more due diligence before dealing with you again. That’s if they’ll deal with you at all.

  Tell the truth, though, and even if they get burned from some key detail you left out, they’ll still drink with you in the club. “We should have asked,” they’ll say, and you’ll nod commiseratingly.

  So every word I told them was true. I just left out that we were the team hired by Fujimoto-Braun Technik.

  His face contorted into a grimace and he grabbed for his phone. “Deal’s off!” he snarled into it. “Someone’s got a leak!”

  I smiled as I watched him bark orders to his gang. Mooks jumped up on the stage and hustled the briefcase away to the secure room in the back of the building. Every ganger went on alert, guns out and scanning for intruders.

  Once the initial flurry of orders had died down, I stepped up to the now-angry gang boss.

  “Whadda you want?” he growled.

  “Just my fee,” I said mildly.

  “I ain’t giving you shit until we find out if the info’s good,” he said. “Bad enough we gotta cancel the deal.”

  “Understandable,” I agreed. “But if you do get attacked, you’ll let Kanzaki know that we were helpful, right?”

  “Yeah, sure,” he said. “I’ll let them know.”

  I smiled and let my friends escort me out of the building. We would be getting enough money for this job as it was, the reputation was the important thing.

  We headed out, but we didn’t go far. Turning right, we slipped into the alleyway next to the club. Like most of the alleyways we’d seen, this thin gap didn’t serve any purpose. Even the muggers had been scared away by the close presence of the gang.

  “Dark enough for you?” Borys asked.

  “Not really,” I said. He shrugged and shot out a nearby light.

  We all froze, but the softer sound of the magic gun didn’t attract any attention. Glaring at him, I pulled on my mask and opened up a shadow.

  Axel had measures in place to deal with Shadow magic. I’d already tried, and I couldn’t use it to enter the upper levels of the corporate buildings. Those areas were cut off from my shadow-sense in a way that felt different from the areas just being well-lit. For the most part, though, he relied on the same defence everyone else used. Light.

  The spotlights on the briefcase hadn’t just been about an incredibly unsubtle way of drawing attention to the thing. It also meant that I couldn’t just Shadow Step over there and take it. The secure room that they’d taken it to, behind guards, alarms and security doors, was also brightly lit. There wasn’t a shadow to be found.

  Getting into that secure room would be a nightmare, now. Earlier, though, the room was just an afterthought. Without the briefcase to protect, there was no need to guard an empty room. Someone, who happened to be invisible, could just walk right in.

  Of course, now, he’d be trapped inside. Trapped behind all those guns and doors and alarm systems. But all he had to do was throw a light switch…

  I felt the space open up.

  “Be right back,” I said and stepped into the shadow.

  The first thing I did when I stepped out was cast [Greater Invisibility]. It was dark, and the mask should hide my identity, but I didn’t want to take chances. My next action was to cast [Light].

  Glancing quickly around the room, I made a note of the important items. The briefcase, of course, sitting on a table.

  Always good to check you had the right item. The body of a guard, unconscious or dead, was on the floor. He must have been Cloridan’s work. The man himself was leaning idly against the wall, still invisible. He gave me a wave.

  I didn’t bother waving back—he couldn’t see me. I just grabbed the briefcase. Cancelling the light, I stepped back into the shadows.

  It might seem a little callous to leave Cloridan there, but I hadn’t learned the spell that let me take others yet. He would be fine: once the gangers realised the briefcase was gone, there wouldn’t be a need for security on the room any more. He’d be able to walk right out.

  What we weren’t sure of was when they’d realise. The way this floor worked, it was even odds that taking it out of the building had cleared the quest. The other possibility was that it wouldn’t clear until we gave it back to Fujimoto-Braun. Covering both possibilities, we left Borys at the club to meet up with Cloridan when he got out and headed off to collect our reward.

  Unlike the real world, we didn’t need to worry that the gang would stew over how they’d been beaten. We hadn’t gotten to our destination before my phone chimed with an update. Kanzaki-Volkswerk’s regard for us had increased.

  “Looks like they got hit after all,” I commented wryly. “I guess our information was good.”

  Felicia giggled. “It’s so strange the way you and Borys do this,” she said. “It’s like a giant puzzle.”

  “I just wish we could solve it faster,” I complained, “But if all goes well, we should be done with at least one of the pieces.”

  We were whisked through security. Our contact whispered a word in the ear of the faceless guard, which was enough for them to turn off the gate and usher us through without precautions. His card in the elevator got us up to the middle management level.

  Ugly mooks in suits that were too nice for them gathered around as we strode into the conference room and put the briefcase on the table.

  The mook with the shiniest suit stepped up. Unlocking the briefcase, he took a deep breath. I tensed up. We hadn’t yet had a quest where the corp turned on us at the end, but I wouldn’t put it past Axel. Not this time though. The mook just breathed a sigh of relief as he saw the machinery inside.

  “You’ve done well,” he said. “The CEO wants to thank you in person.”

  “Of course,” I said, as if that hadn’t been part of the price of the job. We got led to a different, more luxurious, elevator. This one didn’t seem to work on card keys. We didn’t have to press a button, the doors closed once we got inside and we went up.

  This was the final step, for this corporation at least. Once we got the ear of the CEO, we could get jobs from him directly, and one of them would lead to us getting the company token we needed. We were getting close to finishing the first stage.

  Having us wait in his antechamber was a bit of a surprise, but I guess power moves were universal. It gave me time, though, to feel things out. As I’d suspected, the block on Shadow magic was a barrier, not a suppression field.

  “I need to use the bathroom,” I said. The receptionist blinked, but this wasn’t a computer game. Accommodations had to be made for the players, lest they shit in the spotless lobby. She pointed off to the side.

  It was a nice bathroom, as nice as one would expect of the C-Level suites. I only had eyes for one thing, though. The light switch.

  No lights in your walk-in safe, Mr CEO? That will cost you.