Page 48 of Pandion

“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 inbetween 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.

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