Clacking heels and a trail of blue-ish smoke leads Cali and his associates into the building. The office interior seems to be a scene of controlled chaos. The amount of stuff here is a little overwhelming even compared to the back of Louis' truck, but unlike the truck it's about as orderly as can reasonably be managed, with crates and boxes stacked up and labelled along the hall. The hallway opens into what looks like part operating room and part garage. There's another door on the far side of the room. The center is dominated by something akin to a dentist's chair, as well as some workbenches, while around the room are several computer workstations, toolbins, models, and... miscellaneous parts. Some of them are recognizeable as human limb analogues crafted in metal and plastic, others aren't so easy to discern. The doctor indicates the chair, already reading from a datapad.
Cali moves along as steadily as he can with half a large man's weight draped over his shoulders, his tail held close in against his body to keep from tripping up his limping companions or dragging against any of the pointy objects that poke out here and there amongst the boxes. With a bit of coordination and much exhasperated grunting, he and Anya manage to lift Ito up into the chair, and the cheetah steps away to give the doctor a clear look at the wounded man. He eyes the room's assortment of technological goodies the same way he would any pile of scrap back home, stuffing both hands into his pockets to keep any curious urges at bay for the time being. Turning his eyes on the elderly woman, he clears his throat. "So.. you can help him, right?"
"Sure, sure. If his money's still good." The old woman glances between Anya and Ito, the latter sighing and the former crossing her arms. "We're good for it, Lam," says Anya. "We made it back with what we were after. Has anybody been waiting for us?"
Dr. Lam jerks a thumb over her shoulder. "A suit, yah. Been sitting in my lobby since you called. You can bring him in here if you want."
The cat's eyes turn toward the lobby door, at once forgetting the myriad of parts in favor of the prospect of meeting the mercenaries' contact. He can't remember if they had mentioned him or not on the ride to the doctor's... He snaps out of his reverie when his tail, swaying about in betrayal of his obvious curiosity, bumps against a container of what must be replacement joints and sets them rattling against one another. He pulls one hand from his pocket and brushes his ears back with it. "Should we go get him, then, Anya?"
Dr. Lam gives Cali a sharp look but Anya is already nodding briskly and crossing the office. "Right, let's get paid." She ducks through the door, leaving it open behind her.
Attempting to placate the doctor with an apologetic smile, Cali starts toward the door. He pauses on the way out, glancing back toward Ito. "We'll be back, alright? Hang in there." With that, he slips into the lobby and pulls the door shut behind him, trying to catch up with Anya without making too much more noise.
Trotting after the markswoman, Cali passes a few closed doors and then finds himself in a small but tidy lobby. There doesn't seem to be a lot to it, some chairs, a few plastic plants, and a reception area that doesn't have anyone staffing it at the moment. The windows have chinese characters written in them, and a ceramic Buddha sits on a shelf in one corner with a pot of what looks like ash in front of it. The only thing written in english here is a sign reading "Payment due before service". A man in a grey and expensive-looking suit, with a light black overcoat, says, "I'll call you back," and drops an earbud into his pocket. He's a clean-cut looking individual, with a neatly trimmed mustache and short beard, looking just shy of middle age and just shy of being a little too well-fed. He spreads manicured hands out. "Anya, it's good to see you. Made it here hale and whole, I see. Where's Grant and Ito?"
Cali stops just outside the lobby proper, waiting against one wall while Anya is greeted by the man. He stays quiet for the time being, not quite sure what to make of the figure. He seems nice enough, but the cheetah's not about to push his luck; if there's any chance the suit would react badly to the presence of a genestruct at a business meeting, Cali would rather Anya do a little talking before he makes his entrance.
The man gives Cali a curious look, but his attention is drawn back to Anya, who replies with a rather flat tone to her voice. "Grant's dead. Ito's in the workroom, we can close the deal back there."
Rather than look aghast, perturbed, or even surprised, the businessman follows along, his tone as amiably casual as it was when he greeted Anya. "Ah, alright. Did Grant leave anything comprimising behind?" Anya looks considerably grimmer about it, but shakes her head. "No, nothing traceable. That's why you use us."
Both associates make their way back into the hall toward the office.
Cali's eyes widen at the man's response, obviously surprised by his apparent lack of care for the death of a former employee. Is this what the underground does to people? He's about to clear his throat and enter the room when he realizes the two of them have started toward him. He holds up a finger, stepping to the side and pressing himself against one wall to allow them room to pass. "Er-... Hello."
The corporate man gives Cali another measured look, openly curious. "Hello there..." he says, glancing at Anya for prompting. She doesn't even turn around, waving a hand over her shoulder. "He's with us, he helped get us out after the shit hit the fan when we were due to extract."
Cali will take curiosity over outright distaste any day, and as such this man's first reaction is already better than Anya's. He falls into step behind the two as they make their way back to the operating room, his hands held close at his sides. "You can call me Cali, mister..." He struggles to remember if Anya mentioned her contact's name over the comm signal. His tone is respectful enough, though, for a social outcast addressing a known criminal.
"Pleasure to meet you, Cali. Your associates know me as Robert." Rather than distaste, Robert actually offers his hand for a shake. The trio soon pass through the office door and back into Dr. Lam's workroom, where an electric wrench's whine is dying down. The little old woman grunts, lifting Ito's ruined arm off and away, the big fighter tilting a little in the chair before his body adjusts to the missing weight. Lam drops it with an unceremonious crash onto a small toolcart, giving it a cursory inspection before returning to examine the socket opened in Ito's right shoulder.
The cheetah stares at the offered hand with obvious surprise, reaching out to shake it when he realizes his hesitation might give the wrong impression. "It's nice to meet you, too." Cali stays close to the other two as Ito's arm goes crashing onto the cart, amazed by how quickly the old woman was able to remove it and, for that matter, that she was able to lift it by her own power in the first place. Cali takes a step forward and to the side, trying to get a better look at the hole where the limb used to be; he's never seen one disassembled, before. "Are you holding up alright, Ito?" It's only after he speaks that he considers that Lam might have given him a sedative of some kind.
"I'm okay," says Ito, holding his remaining hand up. "The doc says the damage didn't trip the neural feedback breakers, so it probably wasn't major danger. She's got my pain response turned off, and is going to check my leg next. Oh hey, Robert."
"You're looking a little worse for wear, Ito," says Robert, walking around to a side of the office to lean on a counter. "Bit more resistance than expected?"
Kirrei sighs with relief, running another hand through his hair before letting it rest against one of those prominent feline ears, both of which remain trained on the wounded man. "Phew. It would have really sucked to drag you all the way here for nothing." He flashes Ito a little smile and finds an empty stretch of wall to rest against, crossing his arms over his front. He's not sure how many killer robots are considered the 'norm' for a given mission, but 'more than a half-dozen' seems like excess no matter how you slice it.
Ito exchanges glances with his partner. "Anya told you Grant got killed, right?" Robert just nods, and Ito lets his breath out through his nose. ".... Well then. Yes. There was a lot more resistance than we expected. It wasn't bad at first, though Grant bypassed some pretty stiff security measures, or so he said. I don't think they expected anyone to target Murand, seemed like a relatively small branch, but when we made pickup it really stirred up the hornet's nest."
Cali bows his head at the second mention of Grant's death, a twang of guilt playing briefly across his features. He keeps it to himself, for the most part, saying little as he watches the doctor work and listens to Robert's informal interrogation. He thinks back to that first radio transmission, wondering if Grant was still alive when he made the decision to run off into the night to escape what he thought was certain doom for himself. What could be so important that a company would readily kill to get it back?
Ito doesn't answer Cali directly, but when Robert says, "Well, let's see it," the cyborg reaches his good arm into a pouch on his harness, producing a small sealed cylinder. He offers it up, and Robert accepts, looking mildly surprised. "Physical stuff? I figured this little raid would just turn up some data, if it turned anything up at all." Ito shrugs, which prompts an indignant scolding from Dr. Lam, her hands and tools drawing back from his socket. She diverts her attention to Ito's leg instead, where she's pulled bandages and strips of torn cloth away from the bullet wound.
The businessman opens the cylinder, shaking out what appears to be a small swatch of fabric. "What's this?" he asks.
Anya speaks up now. "Some kinda prototype, we got it out of a secure safe. That's when everything went apeshit."
Cali looks just as surprised. One man dies and several expensive machines are ruined for the sake of a tiny cylinder filled with-... "What's that?" He speaks out before he can stop himself, managing to sync the question up with Robert's. At least he's not the only one who wants to know. "They're prototyping cloth, now?" He pushes away from the wall and walks toward it, squinting his eyes for a better look.
The two contractors eye Cali but don't chastise him, and Robert holds the swatch of fabric up for a better look, squinting at it, and letting Cali see it a little better. It's plain grey, smooth-looking, but with no gloss to it... there's no excess reflected light on it at all. "Well... it's an unconventional find, for a raid, but maybe we'll learn something once we get this under a microscope. I know you threw a wrench into Murand, there was a lot of chatter coming out of there, so I'm going to say you made good on your fee. Standard payment method, then?"
The cheetah seems satisfied with his closer inspection, stepping back to give Robert some room with the stolen goods. Curiosity does get the better of him from time to time, after all. He glances up at the businessman at the mention of 'payment', turning to Ito and Anya in turn. For mercenaries that put their lives on the line just to get paid, the two of them seemed awfully eager to part with Grant's share back in the Junkyard. "Guys?"
Anya glances at Ito, who takes a moment to consider this. "I didn't stop to think about how we might work this out," Ito admits. "You're due your cut, Cali, we won't go back on that." Anya nods thoughtfully, and reaches into one of her pockets, coming up with a small card-sized device, a tiny screen on one end of it. "We can give Cali Grant's old account key. I'm pretty sure he always emptied it, so it's not like there's anything waiting for him in here, but it should be a secure way to hold his cut until he wants to transfer it somewhere else." Ito nods, and turns to the genestruct. "We use offshore accounts under dummy names to move this stuff around. Clean for the corporates, clean for us. You can pay out of it and it can't be traced easily. You got records anywhere? Registered with a corp? Legal identity? Anything like that?"
Kirrei laces his hands together behind his neck, looking somewhat proud of himself for earning the approval of the two mercs; it's not an accomplishment he would have expected to find fulfilling, on any day before this one. He shakes his head, moving toward Anya and the first functioning Credit card he's ever seen up-close. "Not really, no. I've just been on my own for a while, I guess. Why, will I need something like that?"
Anya nods, and holds the card out for Cali. "It's pretty much the only way you're going to be able to handle money in any real amount. She presses a touchpoint on the card, which beeps, and a long string of numbers appears on the screen. Ito has produced a key as well, and does likewise. That seems to be a signal to the corporate contact, who brings out what looks like a small PDA, which he taps away at. "Let's see, you got your up front payment. The balance is thirty grand in amers. Divided evenly, right?" The PDA chimes, and the readout on Cali's card flashes "updating balance... transaction complete." The genestruct now finds himself holding a thin card representing $10,000 in America dollars, the currency of the northern, central, and southern americas.
Cali takes the card from Anya, handling it gingerly. Laying it out flat in his palm, he watches numbers scroll across the tiny screen. He's so distracted by what might as well be his newest toy that the amount doesn't sink in until the number flashes on the display a couple times. He checks the decimal point a couple times, his mouth hanging open briefly. "Holy Hell, you're serious?" He taps at the screen with one finger. "T-.. Thanks, guys." He's not sure what to do with the piece of plastic, now, having never actually owned enough money or had any identification that would lead him to need a wallet. He slips it into his back pocket, silently hoping it won't snap in half if he sits down funny.
Anya shrugs, but Ito says, "Small price to pay for getting out of there. Pretty sure Grant would've paid it if he could, but then, he always was kind of a loner." Robert looks satisfied, dropping his prize back into its cylinder and sealing the tube again. "Well, I think our business is concluded for now. I'll be in touch if we need a followup on this thing... if it's big enough, you might even earn a bonus."
## An old lizard in a cloak hobbles in, peering about for a black Khatta. ##