‘Wake up! Waaaaaaaaake up!’ Ripple, hungover from last nights celebration, being violently shaken, his thoughts flowing like chilled molasses, his body a singular throb, each move forcing a fresh pulse of pain, his vision was unclear though watery eyes, the voice was… U-gar?

‘Good morning mother fucker’ came a whisper just next to his ear. Had to be 99-one, Ripple was less than enthused.

‘Short circuit you fragbox.’ Ripple struggled through the pain to turn over looking at his harassers. ‘Yugie you’re the one who kept getting me those shots.’

‘Too bad you durdle, time to pony up. Leader wants you to run a job. You got 15 minutes.’

‘Guh?’

‘You heard. We need to update your ears? Cause I know a guy?’ Came 99’s retort.

‘Those were my orders. Walk us through it Ripple, or you’re out’

‘But I just…’

‘Yeah, this is the last test. So pick it up.’

Ripple had gone to bed last night, sleeping better than he had in months. He’d secured his spot on a runner crew, one of the best, that legendary crew that’s been run of the eastern megasprawl, they did the goat-fox-two-tap, they ran circles around the blue beards, and smurfs at the same time, The Runny Babbits. He’d been getting tested for months, and they were celebrating just the last night, it was his party. Its why he didn’t question that every one was so keen that he be getting the most drinks.

‘The job doesn’t matter, can just be a bit of a gas.’

‘Alright, uh...there’s that Wackdonalds down the street, yeah?’ his brain was mush, and every moment not spent lying down was agony.

‘Sure. Third floor.’ U-gar asked, a smirk of bemusement.

‘Yeah, well I want some fucking browns, anything to put into my stomach.’

‘I’ll bet.’

‘So so so...need to uh… fuck’

‘Ooh. Going the physical security route. Think he’s too ugly for Jailbait though. Volunteering?’

‘No! Just, gimme a sec.’ and he hobbled over to the desk where he’d set up his rig in their hideout. It was a tangle of wires and frames, obvious joints that were soldered by an amateur hand, a mis-matched jumble of manufacturers and some parts obviously scavenged. A joystick, keyboard, a pair of screens, a headset, mouse, and some pedals made the interface points. It was so much slower but he’d never had the cash for an embedded link, and even then Ripple was scared of needles.

He started where he usually did, donning his headset, slipping into the net, taking a look at their digital storefront. It had the usual markers of corporate contracted security, but nothing specialized that he could see. Not first layer any way. Pulling up the site’s web presence, it was bragging about having humans on staff, so you could get a proper greeting and all that. Ripple had found it amusing that everything played reverse these days. Guess if you have the money.

Either way, cracking the gate would be easy enough, and he’d only need the ten minutes- blinking with the headset on caused the back of his skull to light up with fresh pain, and just behind his eyes felt like were set on fire. Ripple couldn’t stop himself letting out a groan.

‘Fourteen minutes bud. Whats the play.’

‘Gimme a sec, got a loose gambit...thinking…’ he loaded up the magnolia, pretty standard starter breaker, want it to look like a script kiddy toying about, sending off the command to get his demon for encrypting his connection loaded, left it on defaults to spoof a random address, and he figured he could bust it. ‘If I were a personnel file, where would I be…’

Diving into the default location, he found it as expected, Lazy but standard, nothing special here, corporate jobs were always so predictable. Schedule for today was… oh that asshole. Fass Yaegger, a name Ripple was familiar with. Fass was a nitwit punk who thought he was going to grow into an enforcer for some local gang, who thought it was hot shit, playing at big time while really just being the team that got used for decoy. Ripple decided he was gonna have some fun with this one.

He wasn’t going to have the kind of time to do this properly. He’d had some run ins with Fass, and a girl who’d he’d have sworn was his girlfriend but Ripple had him clocked as an orbiter. She was a streamer, so he’d have the mats. She might even have been popular enough to...and got it. He’d called it, turns out some one had already made a pretty decent deep fake of her voice, the video looked a bit jank but he was just planning to set up a call so the video quality was superfluous. Add a dash of a language interpreter, a flirty girl bot to figure out the words, and tie it together and he’d have a distraction for as long as he needed.

Needed one more thing, considering the kitchen itself would be fully automated, Ripple figured there would be no way for him to figure out the arcane coding nonsense the twenty or however many gig programmers made that got cobbled together, at least not with the remaining 3 minutes he had, meaning he could not rely on that as his way to get his food. Coupons, were his next thought. Hopefully some old codes were left for various free offers.

A slap on his back, brought the real world back into sharp, agonizing focus. Slipping off his headset, he was met with Arch’s shit eating grin, and accompanying vertigo leading to nausea, with Arch seeming precognizant as he proffered Ripple a bucket. It was used. Arch was the team roboticist and as he would say, resident gizmologist. Rather insistent that it was in fact a word, despite every one else’s argument. ‘Clock is ticking bucko, come on, I got a fifteen doge riding on this.’

‘Tell 99-One to head over there with a bag for me would you. You know any shortcuts for robot hardware?

‘Get me physical access?’

Shaking his head, he reiterated ‘Just, tell 99-One then.’

‘You got it boss.’ Ripple looked around to find their leader, watching him, and the others mill about the shop. He said nothing however. Ripple didn’t have time, or the spare mental energy to waste trying to make sense of it.

His runner should take at least three minutes to get there, leaving it time to send out the call. He still hadn’t got a code yet, but he’d test his luck. He punched in Fass’s number to his voip program, and set the bot to respond to him. Distraction set in motion, he started querying their customer code section of their database. That was a bit trickier than he’d liked. Usually they’re not designed with human interaction in mind, and there’s a multitude of useless columns to sort through, and rarely are entry's in cleartext, but he lucked out. Customer codes just so happened to be, and they did one of the sloppiest mistakes he’d seen a bit. Might be conspicuous but who cares, only the engineer who installed the thing would even know about it, and it still read as an acceptable code. It was an older one but it checked out.

Last thing was to kill the security feeds. Easy enough, he just removed the place where the videos were stored, should throw an error, and look like a misconfig hopefully. Would prevent there from being records for today so it was fine.

He pulled out his phone. Reaching out to grab the steaming mug of whatever some one had put on his desk while he’d been in the net. It was still scorching but he drank it anyway. He found the scalding in his mouth made the dull pain of his hangover more distant. ‘Hey, bud, you at the thing.’

‘Yeah, I’m here at the order thing, you got what I need.’

‘Feed should be dead, their guy should be gone, just need to punch in the code, Xavier Stone is a Cockwomble, and the entire order should be free.’

‘Tell me how ya really feel. Usual spelling?’

‘Yeah, its the usual way. Just get me three of the browns and whatever else people over here want.’

‘You got it boss.’ with that, the caffeinated liquid mud that had been left on the desk, was just cool enough to not scorch his tubes, he rose and almost immediately lost his balance, just catching the desk with his off hand barely steadying himself. If he thought the hangover was past him however movement seemed to bring it rushing back.

Ripple following the wall with one hand wandered toward the bathroom. The leader of the team was leaning against the door. ‘Technically, since the food hasn’t been delivered, you’re going to be two minutes past the limit.’ Ripple hadn’t yet developed an ear, or an eye for that matter, when it came to him, couldn’t tell a joke from a serious comment. Ripple’s heart didn’t sink like he would have expected. Either what was done, was done and he consoled himself with the fact that just having made it this far would be enough to validate his rep. Be it the echoes of the last night, or his just raw tiredness was keeping him numb, unable to really process this. ‘Take your shower, we’ll catch up later.’

Ripple did just that, running the water way too hot, leaving his body numb as the room filled with steam. Honestly, as far as creature comforts he’d probably miss this the most. They ate, like, actual food sometimes, but not having to stare at a clock in the shower, watching your time spin down, as you could almost see your money flowing down the drain, that was something else. He wondered just how much of this place was custom kit, or how they even managed it. The group was legend for a reason he supposed. Scrubbing just enough with some practically primitive soap, to wash off the stink he mostly stood there, cooking his skin to numbness. It was a brief respite from his aches, all to short.

Dried, freshly showered and dressed, he meandered to the kitchen, still at a loss for balance, clinging to the wall, he wandered in to find the whole gang sitting and eating their ill-gotten gains. Various cheap food substitutes with enough flavor powder to at least taste like food, he found his three browns set aside an empty seat for him at the table. He practically collapsed into it.

Ripple seemed like the only one the worse for wear from last nights activities. The memories for him never written so he couldn’t say for sure how many were in the setup, or if it was just a regular night. Adding his own munching noise to the collectives. The table was silent, but not uncomfortably so.

99-One was the first to break the silence. ‘Cockwomble?’

The food was helping but Ripples answer came out half grumble and muffled by food. ‘Guessing the engineer who installed it put that in there. Testing or just childish.’

‘Ah, good so you didn’t add anything.’ this coming from Arch, half of a syrup-toast-stick hanging out of his mouth, his hands tinkering with some metallic sphere.

Being mindful to swallow his food this time

‘Didn’t really have the time. Was trying to be fast.’ his tone dropping at the end.

‘Have to give it to you. That bit with using Ypsum6969? Stroke of genius.’ came Jailbait’s commentary.

‘Yeah, makes me wonder why we keep you around.’ Bullwinkle, one of the teams other divers added. A wink, and blown kiss was all the response he received from her.

‘Hands, I think. And butts, robot butts don’t grind right.’ this coming from Cat. She was one of the fighters, in case of needing physical breaches. She was tough, and apparently augmented to hell, not that Ripple could tell.

‘Not a bad run of cow tipping. Remember, you don’t have to do most of it yourself. You have other people you can reach out to. Next time.’ This last, coming from their fearless leader. A suave, if aged figure. The final word on all things Runny Babbit, their master mind, and living breathing super villain, Spooner himself.