The Protagonist System

A very different Adam Smasher exited the underground server farm. Externally, he acted exactly the same as before, with programmed responses and subroutines that would allow him to act as he always had. That way, no one would ever know that the meat brain inside the lumbering metal construct was braindead. Instead of the previously sequestered consciousness it had, it now housed the Soulkiller program.

Adam had also deleted the backup digital copy of himself, also known as a data construct. He even emptied his personal digital library of horrendous and deplorable acts and then established a permanent data connection between the digital fortress called Mikoshi in Arasaka Corp's basement facility and the advanced spaceship called Defiant that was floating far above him in low Earth orbit.

He rode the elevator up to the security room near the top floor and reconnected the cameras and security systems that he had disabled the night before. Again, his security clearance was high enough to do so and no one questioned it. He also ordered the lockdown to end and his order was followed without question. Only the high tier executives would be notified directly about it.

Adam then went up to the penthouse suite and entered it without knocking. Yorinobu Arasaka had been inconsolable since he couldn't find his preferred joytoy and spent an inordinate amount of time either alone or asleep in his bed. His sister Hanako had encouraged this behavior to allow him to find himself and to center himself, without telling him that she was the one that hid his joytoy in the first place.

Adam ignored the drama playing out in the bedroom and went to where the secret safe was that held the Relic. It was behind some of the best security measures, and counter-security measures available. This had somehow prevented the thing from being specifically targeted by the teleporter, so he used his security authorization and opened the safe. No hacking was required.

As soon as the access panel was opened and revealed the large secured case it was in, the telltale sign of a teleporter covered the case and it disappeared. Adam closed the panel and secured it again, stood, and started to walk across the apartment towards the exit.

“What did you just do?” Hanako asked, her voice calm and also harsh. She knew about the secret storage and had just entered the living room from the bedroom.

Adam stopped walking and turned to face her. “You do not have clearance...”

Hanako barely stopped herself from stomping over to him. Instead, she walked calmly over to him and looked up at his face. “Authorization code: Gamma Alpha Mike Epsilon Charlie Hotel Alpha November Gamma Epsilon Romero. You will tell me everything you have done this night.”

Adam did something then that surprised her. He smiled. “Thank you.”

“What?” Hanako asked, unnerved by the sight.

“Your authorization code grants me blanket protection as I tell you everything.” Adam said, and then he did. He told her exactly what he did to protect the people still inside the tower all night. He also told her about entering the Mikoshi data fortress and deleting his old self, all of his records, and then about arranging to empty the entire place of all the digital constructs that had been stored there.

Hanako was shocked by all of it, because Adam claimed he had done it to protect them all. She was so stunned by his confession that she didn't have him immediately shot or arrested for corporate espionage and sabotage.

Adam's actions had essentially gutted the Arasaka Family's secret primary project that had taken almost a hundred years to come to fruition. They had been very close to perfecting the process of saving a digital copy of someone's consciousness and now it was all gone.

“Father is going to be very angry.” Hanako said in a whisper.

Instead of saying anything, Adam handed her a brochure.

Hanako accepted it and stared at the Atlas Incorporated logo and the title on the thing. Do you want to live forever? She read, her disbelief now giving her a slight panic attack. Then visit the Bioware Department at Atlas Incorporated. Depending on the upgrades you choose, you can leave looking and feeling like you're 20 again!

Hanako continued to stare at the thing, as if it was making fun of her and the legacy of her entire family. She didn't notice Adam Smasher walking away from her and out of the apartment. It would be the last time anyone would see the head of security and the extensive and discreet search conducted that day would eventually turn up nothing. Everything he owned or had stashed anywhere, was gone.

*

I 'woke up' as Veder and smiled at being the center of a cuddle pile. Denise's friends had kept a polite distance before last night and I respected that. However, after saving the life of their friend, it had brought down any semblance of professionalism or distance they thought they should have because I was dating their friend.

Surprisingly, Denise was perfectly fine with that. She didn't say anything out loud. It was how she herself had relaxed around her friends after they found out her stories about me weren't exaggerated. It had been a difficult thing for them to accept, since it really was rare to find someone that treated them with respect and didn't objectify them... without their permission.

“We have to get up if you're going to show up for work on time.” I said, just loud enough for the 4 women to hear me and to wake them up.

They all groaned and shook their heads at the same time, then they mumbled something about no work after the riots. It was kind of adorable, actually. I brought up the camera feed on the Arasaka Tower and put it on the vidscreen as proof and tried to lift a hand to point at it. Fortunately, it was trapped under Denise and she hugged it to her breast to keep its warmth for a bit longer.

“The Tower's no longer on lockdown.” I said and that seemed to work.

“Wait, really?” One of the women asked and pushed herself up out of the pile. Her hand was conveniently placed on my morning erection and she didn't seem eager to change that. “Drek, it really is. All the shutters are retracted.”

The other women groaned again and started to stir. The one still holding me over my boxer shorts smiled knowingly as each of the others tried to copy her moves when they pushed themselves up into a sitting position.

Denise laughed when she sat up and saw the disgruntled looks on the faces of two of her friends. She turned to me without telling her third friend to remove her hand. “We'll need a ride to our places to get ready and dressed for work.”

“I've got a Delamain AV limo waiting just outside.” I said and she leaned in and kissed me. It was more than a peck but much less than a passionate one.

“Girls, let's go.” Denise said and stood, stretched to give me a great view of her breasts, then she quickly put on her bra and a sensible top.

The other 3 women did a similar move, only they still had their bras on. All 4 of them hadn't removed their panties and they all were quite damp down there. They quickly dressed while I packed up their clothes into 4 suitcases. They gave me appreciative looks as they accepted the bags and started walking out of the backroom.

I quickly slipped on my pants and a shirt, equipped my gun and holster, and followed them. “Thanks for letting us crash in the back, Atlas.”

The older and larger man waved to me. “You've sold me several revolutionary tech advances. It's the least I could do.”

I patted him on the back. “Good luck registering your reconstruction company.”

Atlas smiled and held up a datapad with the information already on it. “I've already done that and bought ad space across the city to advertise all the repairs that were done last night.”

I laughed and waved as I left the office. “He's definitely on top of things.”

Denise and her friends nodded and Delamain opened the side door of the AV for us.

“Hey, choom! Nice work last night.” I said to Delamain as I helped the women inside to their seats.

“It was mostly thanks to Atlas. His upgrades really came in handy.” Delamain responded.

“It's like a little lounge in here.” One of them commented at the luxury interior and her hand caressed the plush blue interior.

“Delamain has good taste.” I said and stepped in and sat down myself.

“Thank you.” Delamain said and the AV lifted off.

He filed a flight plan after getting the addresses from the women and we made a round trip to drop them all off and I arranged for Delamain to pick us up again to get to Arasaka Tower in time for our 6 A.M. shift. That earned me a kiss from Denise and longing looks from the other three.

I was dropped of at my place and held in my smile at how surprised the secretaries were that there was literally no evidence on the streets that anything had happened last night, despite the hours of footage of the carnage that had taken place.

I had a quick shower, dressed in my corpo suit with gun and all, then rode in Delamain's luxury AV back through a similar route to pick up each of the women and we made it to Arasaka Tower with 10 minutes to spare. We made it to their floor right on time and Denise let out a sigh of relief.

“Let's get to work.” Denise ordered, and we did.

There were more files to scan for errors and many of them had been changed or updated since the last time they were checked, which meant it was going to be a busy day of enjoyable work for all of us.

*

No one could quite believe it at first. The few people brave enough to unlock their doors after the news broadcasts ended, were shocked that the scenes they saw on the news were faked. They had to be, because none of the damage or wreckage they had depicted were there.

The first to venture out into the main part of the city in their car, mostly to test if it was really safe to do so. They initially had thoughts about scavenging some weapons or perhaps something else to sell, then they were disappointed that there was literally nothing left. Even the mounds of garbage that usually had a few druggies digging through it every morning for something new, had been cleaned out.

A tip had been sent into the news stations and they dismissed it as a hoax, because they had several crews out and about during the whole fiasco and recorded hours upon hours of footage of everything that had happened.

It wasn't until one of them went outside for an early morning coffee run that they saw the tip hadn't been exaggerated. They called upstairs and reported it officially, which unleashed the news hounds again and they flooded the streets to record everything they found, with most of them comparing previous shots with the new and completely clean area.

While the news crews were out, one of them caught the Atlas Incorporated ad on camera that featured their new reconstruction business and that they were responsible for the miraculous and speedy recovery.

By the time the rest of the normal people in the city were awake, all of the news programs had spread the word that everything was fine and dandy in the main parts of city, thanks to Altas Incorporated. All attempts for interviews and searches for them and their executives, were somehow blocked and rerouted to a disinformation site on the net that was full of anti-propaganda.

It didn't take long before people started questioning if what they had heard or seen was real or not. The news stations doubled down on showing the footage again, added more color commentary, and they also said that none of the people rioting that had been captured last night were in any of the jail cells, in any of the precincts, anywhere in the city.

That set off another storm of investigations by the news crews. When the day shift police came to work to start their shifts, they fully expected to be swamped with calls and people in person reporting crimes. Not one single call had made it through the automated system and no one was there in person to report anything, let alone a crime that happened the night before.

This set off an investigation of their own and they checked the system that handled their call logs. They found the message the Police Commissioner had put into place and quite a few of the police officers and detectives were disgusted by it. The rest just assumed he did it to cover his ass and there was nothing they could do about it.

Tens of thousands of access requests had been made from people all over the city and each of them received the same message in response. Services had been suspended for the night. It had been technically true, since the day shift were in no position to go out to handle the gangs and rioters by themselves.

They had their own personal responsibilities to take care of, namely family and friends. There was no way they were going to leave the safety of their homes and abandon their families to head through the various war zones across the city by themselves to reach their assigned precincts and gather together a large enough force to form an offensive front to suppress everyone that broke the law.

The smarter police officers had hunkered down and resolved to deal with it all in the morning, only to find that there was nothing for them to deal with. Circumstances and politics had conspired to stop them from doing their jobs, even in the light of day. There was nothing they could do about it until the Police Commissioner came out of wherever hole he had hidden himself.

Police Commissioner Jerry Fawlter had been safely secured inside the bunker under Night City Hall with the mayor and had watched the entire fiasco unfold while subjected to the hate-filled glare of everyone else inside the bunker. Being the one that caused it all had not endeared him to his fellow man, not with how many deaths their had been and how much destruction had happened.

Even his own wife had glared at him as one of her favorite shopping districts had suffered from a riot and all of the storefronts had been smashed and the products inside had been looted. Some of them had been taken down by that stylish private police force and that made them feel some satisfaction, only for the mayor to deny any sub-contracts with anyone for those kinds of services.

When the bunker was finally opened and everyone left to go to their homes, they noticed that everything was fine. The mayor himself was almost angry at the false propaganda the news stations had perpetrated against him and his staff, only to have one of his guards show him the new news broadcasts and that it had all happened and had been cleaned up by Atlas Incorporated.

When he asked his staff who had approved another company's contract for garbage collection, one of them produced it and everyone was shocked by how cheap it was. How could a company that large function with so little external revenue? The stock prices alone should have justified a bribe for twice the amount that the new service cost, so where was it getting the rest of the money to pay so many people?

The mayor ordered a full investigation into the company and then he had to arrange the formation of a committee to assess candidates and then appoint who was going to do the investigation. It would eventually take weeks before he saw one bit of paperwork concerning what he wanted and by then he would have forgotten why he wanted it. He wasn't bribed to be concerned about it, so it wasn't a priority.

*

The heads of the departments in Biotechnica entered their HQ building, only to find it trashed on the inside. A check of the security footage gained them nothing. It had been hacked. Their offices and most of the stairwell had been gutted and destroyed, which showed how the perpetrators had gained access to the upper floors without using the elevator that required a passcode and a security card.

A quick harsh message was sent to Militech for failing to fulfill their contract and their lawyers would be contacted to arrange reparations. How could they have left them undefended while the rest of the city burned? Where was their corporate pride?

Many other companies and businesses had their workers come to work and they discovered a similar situation. Some of the insides were trashed and looted, while the outside still looked pristine and well maintained. They sent messages of admonishment and threats as well.

Militech received similar messages from many of their clients, as if it was their fault that the rioters and gangs had been out in force to wreck the city. The problem was, all external damage had been either fixed or replaced already. How that was possible, across the entire city in so short a time, was beyond mind-boggling for most people.

Despite their material losses of both equipment and personnel, Militech would be paying through the nose for the broken contracts. In fact, most companies would claim losses and their insurance premiums would rise appropriately to cover it all.

The only corporation that had come out of the entire night's chaos almost completely unscathed, was Atlas Incorporated. Even with the false information out there that soured people's opinions of them, everyone knew it was them that had handled the gangs and rioters and then they dealt with the clean-up afterwards. It earned their grudging respect, even if they were just another corpo.