Pandion (Genera #1)

Chapter 18

T he review was scheduled for the following Monday. Harumine postponed it until Wednesday. He had a plan. He wasn’t particularly confident about the plan nor did he hold high hopes for it, but it was a plan.

If anyone had records and data about the organism that could help diagnose what was going on with Kagesawa, it had to be the EA. The recent events and political turmoil had caused the local EA office to fall into a state of near chaos. Harumine waited for his appointment in the lobby area and saw people dash about, some looking frantic, some already succumbed to apathy.

His escort was fifteen minutes late. He’d prepared a slew of shoddy excuses for why his port had been removed and tampered with, so he was both miffed and relieved when they skipped the security check—likely because they assumed the link between him and Kagesawa had expired—and the subject never came up.

Upstairs, Harumine had to wait for another fifteen minutes before the reviewer, Kaneda-san, arrived to show him to one of the rooms. She was unprepared, browsing through her palm reader, unable to find the correct file and searching for a data chip from the disarray that was her work desk. She tried to make do with some incomplete notes but gave up halfway and sent her secretary out on a hunt for her missing documents. The questions she’d prepared seemed inconsequential. This review wouldn’t have yielded any useful results even had Harumine wished to cooperate.

“Are you in a hurry? Can you wait here for a moment?” She dashed out, presumably to search for the secretary since he hadn’t returned yet. It was a convenient opportunity to poke around the room, but alas, she’d not logged in on her BCI, and Harumine could find nothing of interest at her desk.

When Kaneda-san returned, she asked to reschedule. She couldn’t even set a date, only informed him that she would be in touch. If the first review had seemed a tad haphazard and disorganised, this one implied the EA had since completely lost the plot.

Harumine spotted a familiar face when he returned to the reception area. This was not a coincidence. Pulling up work schedules wasn’t nearly as challenging as fishing for some of the other information Kagesawa had had him retrieve.

Since Kagesawa’s impression of the relationship was somewhat unreliable, Harumine needed to play this by ear until he could determine which approach had the highest chance of success.

“Oh, hello, what brings you by?” the former kiosk attendant asked. He recognised Harumine’s face from that single meeting on the linking day, but since he hadn’t addressed him by name, there was a fair chance he either didn’t know or recall it. Good.

“I’m here for a review, but it was rescheduled.”

“Nothing serious, I hope?” The now-receptionist asked. “You’re still linked to Kagesawa, right? I haven’t seen him around.” So far, the words hinted at worry, but was that kindness intended towards Kagesawa or for Harumine, or was it merely polite smalltalk? His body language was giving off a few hints but nothing clear enough to risk it, yet.

“In a manner of speaking. You’re no longer working at the info kiosk? Did you get a promotion?” Harumine asked.

“Yes, but only because we are currently understaffed. As you can see, it’s quite the putrid scat cabaret.”

“I was wondering about that. What’s going on?”

“A bunch of dumdums started removing and modding their ports, the general public found out, and all hell broke loose. We’re swamped with paperwork having to deal with unhappy employers, licence issues, applications for port reinstalls, reporters asking for interviews, people calling in to confirm conspiracy theories like whether the empaths are going rogue to stage a coup or if there’s some secret threat we’re preparing for. Alien invasion or similar idiocy. The rumours are getting preposterous.”

“There was something about that on the news. I didn’t think it was this bad.”

“Oh, it’s bad. Whoever made that video deserves a spot under the earth’s crust. I have a double-shift every other day doing desk work to sort all of this. I’m this close to quitting.” The receptionist pressed his thumb and forefinger together. “I’m getting harassed daily. Most of my empath friends are taking their vacation days, leaving the country and hoping that all of this will have blown over by the time they get back. I don’t fault them at all, in fact, I’d recommend everyone do the same because this could get ugly.”

“Probably a lot of portless jumping ship as well, I’d imagine. What will you do?”

“I thought I’d go back home to see my family. I’ll probably have to think about a career change, but it’s going to be a challenge to find anyone willing to hire an ex-EA employee.”

“Surely no one can hold that against you? It’s not like you’re personally responsible for what the EA does.”

“You’d be surprised how bad our reputation has become. Are the two of you still finding work? Do you have something stable lined up? Better save up, because if the trend persists, there won’t be much on offer at the end of the year.”

“That reminds me.” Harumine had heard enough to deem it safe to get to the point. He lowered his voice. “I wonder if you could help me out with something.”

“If it’s within my power.” The receptionist leaned over his counter, sensing it might be something sensitive.

“Could you give me access to the mainframe?” It was a wholly unreasonable request, but once the receptionist refused it, he would be more willing to grant the next request to make up for the rejection. All Harumine really needed was access to a room with a BCI and some guaranteed privacy to test if they could implement a few of Kagesawa’s tricks to get through.

The receptionist checked his surroundings and seemed to be considering it, much to Harumine’s surprise.

“What do you need it for?”

“I can’t tell you the details, but it’s work-related. Nothing that would mean anything for anyone but me and Kagesawa.”

“Normally you’d be on your own, but things are so messed up right now, I don’t think anyone cares if there’s an extra login.” The receptionist took a step back and checked something on his computer. “Room 408, on the fourth floor. It’s empty. There’s a BCI. I can give you twenty minutes.”

“It could take longer.”

“Absolute maximum thirty-five. It’s reserved at five. You’d better not get caught with anything.” He handed Harumine his keycard for the lift.

“All right, I’ll make it work. Thank you so much!”

“Don’t mention it.”

The fourth floor seemed deserted. Slipping into room 408 undetected was suspiciously easy. Ready? Harumine asked and hooked up to the BCI.

Yes, Kagesawa responded with no delay.

As promised, the receptionist had logged in remotely. He didn’t have credentials to all of the security levels, but this instant access did save them a lot of valuable time, and, as luck had it, Harumine found some files that looked promising. With less than a half an hour, though, he couldn’t afford to skim through all of it, so he had to rely on his instincts to pick what was most likely useful.

Remember, you need to focus. If you get distracted, it’ll likely corrupt the files. I can’t be boosting your concentration while I’m doing the transfer, so the rest is all up to you. Harumine wished there was something more he could do to help Kagesawa or that there was some other way to do this, but he needed to leave the building empty handed and without leaving a trace, so the only alternative was to rely on the link.

Sending data for a full half an hour was going to be a challenge even for Harumine. It was customary to work in less than fifteen-minute increments with a five-minute break in between for the best results, but that five minutes could be the difference between getting everything they needed or ending up with useless scraps. It wasn’t as if he could march in without an appointment to ask for favours again. This was it.

Understood. I’m ready. Kagesawa sounded confident. If this had been anything like his hobby, Harumine wouldn’t have worried at all. But being at the receiving end was an uninteresting and repetitive task he’d struggled with before. His skills and concentration had improved some since their short stint at the research institute, but whether that would translate to something here remained to be seen.

Harumine was done with the preparations. He started cataloguing the material he’d chosen, processed it and sent it through the link.

Ah, I can probably do this. It’s not so bad, Kagesawa noted.

Shut up and focus, Harumine reminded him. He was relieved, though. If Kagesawa was in a good mood and feeling optimistic about it, the chances were he’d do a decent job. Armed with this information, Harumine dared to speed it up a little. It’d probably give him a nasty headache, but he’d take some painkillers and sleep it off later.

Fifteen minutes in, Harumine was reminded why this was the recommended maximum. Pushing past it wasn’t the hardest thing he’d done, but he was having flashbacks to how he’d burnt out sorting trash, and his port was starting to feel warm. Kagesawa had refitted it with better parts, so it was holding up better than its predecessor, but it was definitely getting uncomfortable.

He decided to forgo all nonessential indexing and did some on-the-fly compressing to maximise output, but it would be a hellish task to sort through it all later on.

It couldn’t be helped.

Twenty minutes in, he could feel the corner of his eye start to twitch from the tension.

Not being sure whether this effort would amount to anything made it almost unbearable around the twenty-five minute mark.

With each passing minute, keeping track of every detail of the process became exponentially more tedious and tiresome.

Thirty minutes in and Harumine gritted his teeth, feeling like he was trying to catch fish with his bare hands—everything felt slippery and difficult to grasp. It was like trying to have a serious conversation with Kagesawa about their relationship.

With a slight delay, Harumine realised he was about to run out of time and needed to wrap things up. The last batch of files felt like it took an eternity to send.

You got that? he asked, disconnected from the BCI, held on to the edge of the desk and closed his eyes for a moment.

I think so. Are you OK? You seem… disoriented.

Harumine didn’t have time to respond. As soon as he’d recovered enough, he hurried out of the room. When he closed the door and started walking down the corridor, a group of people appeared from behind a corner and walked towards him. He’d shaved it too close for comfort, but at least he’d made it out.

Harumine strained himself to act as casual as he could until he heard the group enter the room he’d exited. He slipped into the empty staircase and leaned against the wall, head still a reeling mess.

Hopefully, this had been worth it.