Rain lashed the ferroconcrete, slicking the corridors of the Exchange to a sheen. The air tasted of ozone and desperation. Jax traced a finger across the chipped Formica of the broker’s desk, ignoring the static cling. The man, Krell, didn’t meet her gaze. He kept his attention fixed on the flickering datastreams scrolling across his retinal display.
Jax hadn’t seen natural light in days. Didn’t matter. She had a job.
“The package?” she asked, voice a low rasp.
Krell finally looked up, his eyes like polished stones. “Price climbed. You knew it would.”
“I factored in market volatility.”
“Volatility doesn’t cover the heat on this one. Someone wants this profile *gone*. Scrubbed. And they’re paying a premium for discretion.” He tapped a series of commands on his console. A price flared, ugly and exorbitant. “Triple your initial bid.”
Jax barely blinked. “Details.”
“Ex-Corp security. Went rogue. Took data. Bad data. And a lot of it.”
“They want a complete overwrite, then?”
“More than that. They want a ghost. No trace. No ripple. A clean slate. Understand?” Krell leaned forward, his breath smelling of synthetic sweetener. “This isn’t profile repair, Jax. This is demolition.”
Jax nodded, already running diagnostics on her rig. Her neural interface hummed, a familiar thrum against her skull. “I understand the work.”
“Good.” Krell slid a data chip across the desk. “Credentials. Access codes. And a warning. If you get burned on this, I won’t know you.”
Jax pocketed the chip. A cold feeling settled in her gut, but she ignored it. Credits talked, and these credits screamed.
“Let’s get to work.”
The abandoned warehouse reeked of rust and decay. Rain hammered the corrugated iron roof, a relentless percussion. Jax jacked into the target’s dormant profile, the neural link establishing a fragile connection. The man’s memories flickered across her mind’s eye – fractured images of sterile hallways, coded directives, a growing unease.
“Easy now,” she muttered, navigating the labyrinthine structure of his digital self. “Let’s see what we’re dealing with.”
The data was… chaotic. Layers of encryption, firewalls, and counter-surveillance programs. Someone had anticipated this.
“Clever bastard.”
She began the overwrite process, replacing the man’s core identity with a fabricated persona. A routine task for a broker of her skill. But the system fought back, throwing up error messages, triggering intrusion alerts. Something was wrong. Terribly wrong.
“What the…”
A searing pain exploded in her skull. Her vision blurred, fragmented. The fabricated persona fractured, glitching into static.
“They’re blocking me.”
She tried to sever the connection, but it was too late. A counter-program had locked onto her interface, initiating a reciprocal transfer. His memories flooded her mind, raw and unfiltered. Images of a vast conspiracy, a betrayal that reached the highest levels of the Corporation, and a target: her.
“No…”
The warehouse lights flickered, then died, plunging the space into darkness.
“They knew I was coming.”
A crimson glow pierced the rain-streaked windows. Sirens wailed in the distance. The implants in her skull screamed, warning of incoming fire.
“Bet your boots,” she breathed, adrenaline surging through her veins, “this chase just got a whole lot more handsome.”
She ripped the jack from her skull, the pain momentarily blinding. The fabricated profile dissolved, leaving only the raw, screaming data of the man’s memories, and a cold, hard truth.
They hadn’t hired her to erase a profile. They’d hired her to *become* it. And now, someone wanted her dead.
