“Hey Zoe,” Chloe greeted a few days later as Zoe entered the office.

“Hey Cee. How’s life?” Zoe replied.

“Good,” Cee answered. “You’ve been doing alright.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just what I said,” Cee replied. “Henri thinks you’re doing decently enough.”

“I’ve been on time for every job,” Zoe protested. “And then I’m working on the scanner in between jobs or in my downtime.”

“True,” Chloe agreed. “But you could be doing better. Want some advice?”

“Sure.”

“Start asking Henri for more jobs. Show him that you want and are capable of more,” Cee said. “He’ll give you all you can handle or want if you prove you can handle what you ask for. You did say have a lot of debt to pay off and won’t get that done just making 400-500 credits a day in this city.”

“That makes sense. I’ll start calling and asking him for more after each job,” Zoe said after giving it some thought for a moment. “That’s also why I’m working on the scanner so hard. The other guys said every courier would gladly pay for a police scanner. I figure I could charge 100-200 credits per copy of it.”

“How are you going to keep people from sharing it?” Chloe asked.

“A database of approved users,” Zoe replied smiling at Cee. “Since there are about 1000 of us in the city, I figure if I can sell the scanner to half of them, that’ll at least be enough to pay off my mob debt.”

“And if you charge 200 credits a copy that will leave you another 50K to rent a place of your own, pay for your gun, and maybe get another cybernetic upgrade or two,” Chloe said returning Zoe’s smile. Zoe’s smile faded and she started looking thoughtful. “What’s the matter? Never considered getting a place of your own?”

“I honestly hadn’t considered,” Zoe admitted. “Though, I suppose I shouldn’t impose on Aunt Annie and Jimmy more than I need to.”

“My advice is to start looking and saving up now. Rent prices in this city are insane depending on the neighborhood and borough,” Chloe replied. She waved Zoe around her desk. “Check out these prices. Buying is much worse.”

“How can people afford this?” Zoe asked after seeing the prices.

The cheapest, smallest apartments were 500 square foot studios that went for 3000 credits a month in the worst neighborhoods. 700 square feet one-bedroom apartments in a decent neighborhood were priced at 4000 a month. Anything in Manhattan was at least 500 more a month with prices starting at 6000 a month in the better neighborhoods. Heck, even 20ft cargo containers converted into living spaces with a bathroom were at least 2000 a month in the worst neighborhoods.

“By having roommates unless you’re like Henri and Cee,” Newt said putting a hand on Zoe’s shoulder. “Come on! You could have jumped a little.”

“My angel let me know you were there, and I saw Cee give that slight nod to you out of the corner of my eyes,” Zoe replied.

“Blasted Kaiser optics,” Newt mock complained as the rest of the couriers trooped in and greeted Chloe and Zoe.

“What did you mean unless someone is like Henri and Cee?” Zoe asked.

“Henri owns the building, and we turned the basement into an apartment,” Chloe answered. “He has considered turning the attached warehouse into apartments, but he likes having the storage space and using it as a parking garage.”

“That’s why you never see Chloe’s bike or Henri’s car in the parking lot,” Vee said.

“And why should we park in the lot when I can rent those spaces out and use them for you guys?” Henri asked as he joined them.

“I’ve thought of a question,” Zoe said.

“Ask away,” Henri replied.

“Why is this building so small and only one story, well two if you add the basement, considering its location?”

“The original burnt down 30 years ago. The postal service built this one and the warehouse to serve as a small hub for Harlem. The parking lot was built to park the delivery trucks on the rest of the space the original building occupied,” Henri answered. “I was very lucky to be able to buy this place before a corporation did.”

“Don’t ask how he did it or if he is still making payments. He won’t answer,” TK warned. Zoe shut her mouth.

“Here’s your assignments for this morning,” Henri said. “Have fun.”

*

“Zoe, how’s the scanner coming?” Terr asked as they walked out to their motorcycles.

“You guys ask me this every day. It’s coming along slowly,” Zoe said. She had found the other coder’s backdoor easily enough. The problem was getting through his security. Instead of wasting time trying to crack his password, Zoe went looking for other backdoors and found a dozen. One of the backdoors did have a simple password, but it didn’t lead to the police comm network.

Half of the rest didn’t have the right access either. Zoe finally got lucky and found one that did and was able to slice the password without being detected. It was slow work creating her own backdoor into the network using the other backdoors as blueprints as several of her attempts had been quickly found by the city coders. It was time consuming, but it should give her permanent access to the entire police comm and camera networks eventually. Zoe didn’t want access to the rest of the network.

“I bet she’s working on improving her ICE more than she’s working the scanner,” TK said grinning.

“I would be if I knew how too,” Vee said.

“Oh, I’ve been working on that too,” Zoe admitted. She had started improving Bastion the moment she figured out how Wang Chi had gotten through her ICE.

“How did you get the logs from the attack?” Newt asked.

“CyberBionic had been happy to give me access to the logs after I contacted them and explained there was a way to slice into the Allegro and ICE, I had bought from them,” Zoe answered. “I suppose their management wasn’t thrilled that their premiere frame had been sliced fairly easily by a ‘mere gangbanger’ even though it is supposed to be one of the more secure frames.”

The others laughed.

“That’ll do it,” Vee said. “Corps hate when their precious products are made to look bad.”

“I’m off to the marina on W 79th St,” Zoe said putting on her helmet.

“Probably carrying evection notices,” TK said.

“Really?” Zoe asked.

“Yup. Some people live on rental houseboats there,” Newt said.

“Somebody or some corp got the idea to make a boathouse community like they have in other large cities years ago. It never took off due to how cold it gets on the Hudson during the winter,” TK said.

“Plus, houseboats are small unless you have a lot of credits to blow,” Terr added.

“That’s true of any apartment in the city,” Vee replied.

“True,” Terr conceded. “Are we meeting for lunch today?”

“57th St Pizzeria again?” TK asked.

“Let’s do the breakfast place on W 59th St across from Central Park instead,” Vee said.

“Good idea,” Newt agreed.

“Works for me,” Terr said.

“Sure,” TK said. “Zoe?”

“That’s fine. It’ll be a change of pace from subs, salads, pizza, and pasta,” Zoe replied.