To my complete and utter surprise, not one single extracurricular thing happened the next day. I went to school, had a nice relaxing class time with the girls mooching a little off of me during the programming section, went to lunch in which I shared another container of veggies with Kei and a container of fruit wedges with Evelyn and the other girls, then spent the afternoon classes chatting while we all wrote a report about the historical significance of technology on human behavior.

I changed my uniform and went to work after school with Denise and the other three secretaries, which they had a great time doing the same thing they did the day before. They only had to step in once this time when a major discrepancy was found and it was tracked down to a filing error. Some of the MacKenzie information was logged under McKenzie by mistake and we spend over half an hour sorting all of that mess out.

The difference with them was that they had many more files to look after, with multiple filing cabinets with 4 drawers apiece, so we would be busy doing paperwork for quite some time. The thing was, more of the files were changed or altered during the day, as various departments handled things and sent in even more paperwork and digital copies for filing and needed digital verification.

That meant going back over already approved files to fix or change them, which added a lot to our already massive workload. The best part about that was the women were getting large overtime pays until the monumental task was done and they were having a good time doing it. There was nothing better for you than doing your work and actually enjoying it, especially if the people with you also enjoyed the same thing.

Again, they forced themselves to work until midnight and I escorted them to the front door. When I thanked them for not being upset that they had to spend so much extra time with me, because my boss was a dick, all they did was laugh and Denise gave me another quick kiss. She whispered that there were only three more days to go and then it was the weekend.

I nodded and waved to them, then went down to the basement's trash depot and kept working. It was only make-work, so I looked busy the whole time, and then Atlas showed up with a police escort again and picked up the trash, gave me a report, and flew off. I actually laughed at how happy the police were that he wasn't claiming the huge bounties of the Scavs and Wraiths the police were mopping up.

The best part about that? Most of them were independent and none of their own noticed when they disappeared. When other Wraiths and Scavs showed up in the massive junkyard and garbage dump, they didn't wonder where the others went. They just set up a temporary base to let them roam at their leisure into the city for more victims to rob.

The police cleaned them up just as easily as they did the others. There were so many of them around that it was almost inconceivable that there wouldn't be any for them to take down every night. Plus, the crimes they stopped and the body parts they found. Even with several borg bodies being discovered, the police never clued in that the Maelstrom Gang was completely gone.

I went home early this time, packed everything up, and spent several hours moving everything upstairs into the penthouse suite of the same building. I had thought, and rightly so, that my apartment was swanky in comparison to a normal apartment. This one blew my old apartment out of the water.

The living room alone was pretty damn close to the upper class lounge in the Counter-Intelligence Department. The bathroom was twice the size and the tub could seat 4 people. The shower was the same size, the difference being that it had multiple shower heads. It had the same cleaner and presser for clothes, so no improvement there.

The bedroom was actually two bedrooms, with a master suite and a side suite, the side one the same size as my old bedroom and the new one the size of my old living room. Closet space was everywhere, so all of my stuff disappeared from sight, even my cyberdeck and workstation. They were hidden behind fold-out doors that slid closed and you couldn't tell any tech at all was in the place.

It was definitely a place that showed you were favored by the company you worked for and there was no other way to get an apartment like this than to have that. The problem was, if you ever lost that favor, you were out on your ass faster than you could say it wasn't fair.

I went to the living room to set up my normal vidscreen to watch television and then remembered there was probably one already installed. The walls were blank, though. I thought about the bedroom and my hidden cyberdeck and felt out with my technomancy power and found a huge ten foot wide screen behind a false panel in front of the large sectional couch.

I glanced around and didn't see a remote, so I poked it and activated it. The panel slid backwards and the huge vidscreen slid out into view. I turned it on and the people on it were life-size. I laughed at the thing, because it was like you were actually there. It was only one or two steps away from being a full VR experience.

I sat down and watched the news for several minutes, transfixed on the detail, because it literally looked like the news desk was right there and the woman wearing the tight gold top giving the news looked as real as if she was actually sitting there in front of me.

I copied it, of course. You could never have enough wall-size televisions.

After enjoying watching her intentionally bounce her breasts a few times when she took deep breaths, I shut it off and it slid back into the wall and the false panel covered it again. I checked the time and it was pretty late, so I went to the bedroom and unpacked my clothing, changed my clothes into pyjamas, hung up the gun and holster in the closet, and went to bed.

Hopefully, the next few days would be the same as today, with no surprises or incidents. Then it would be Saturday and a much shorter workday for myself and for Denise. It made me wonder what she had planned for the evening and I went to sleep with various thoughts of gold covered breasts going through my head.

*

Not surprisingly, the police booked off for the next night's trash patrol and Atlas agreed to only go right to Arasaka Tower and then back home. As much fun as it was, they had equipment to clean, maintain, and rearm. They also had to check the AVs and patrol cars after such extensive use.

Atlas offered his corporation's services and they had to officially decline, because the Municipal Criminal Justice Complex had exclusive outsource contracts for major fleet repairs, cyberware maintenance, and facility upkeep with other companies, namely Night Corp and Militech, to handle everything they couldn't do in-house for themselves.

Privately, quite a few of the officers had stopped by his corporate office after work and bought a few of his cybernetic upgrades, mostly the eyes and memory expansion chips. Since they did it on their own personal time and paid with their own money, and not police funds or claimed the equipment deductions from their budget, they didn't violate the contracts they were locked into.

Atlas thanked them again for having his back and refilled all of their vehicles and their thermoses before they left. Just the fuel alone saved them thousands of eddies and the coffee was just a bonus. It saved them from having to buy their own and an entire thermos full stayed hot and lasted for quite a while.

Instead of going home, Atlas went into his office and bought a license to use Veder's filed patent for the armored limo AV that was more of an APC than a luxury car. He pulled it into his own design program on a cyberdeck that was air-gapped from the net and changed it to add the micro hoverpads he had designed that were based on tech from the Matrix.

He removed the large hover engines and seeded the smaller ones all over the underside of the vehicle's armor plating, that way they were hidden and also completely protected. He left the fuselage of the two small jet engines on the underside, just so no one would question how it was flying. After he gutted them, he replaced the insides with phaser generators and changed the light wavelength to the ultraviolet spectrum.

As far as anyone not in the know was concerned, the APC wasn't armed. It was set to default on the stun setting and would need command codes to unlock lethal mode, which included a cutting laser. He would have to let Delamain in on the secret... and then would probably be commissioned to install them on all of his taxis and limos.

Atlas chuckled at that and added in a few more safety features, like expanding cushions to protect the people inside and space age shock absorbing materials to reduce any impact to almost nothing. He added additional stabilizers to the underside to handle the extra weight and that would pretty much make the thing as steady as a rock as it flew. 𝙧𝙚𝙚𝔀𝒆𝓫𝓷𝙤𝓿𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝙤𝓶

Oh, and he increased the rate at which it could fly, too. Since it didn't rely on such small jet engines to move its heavy bulk, the many smaller hoverpads let it reach up to speeds that a normal vehicle on the ground could reach. Since there was no pavement friction in the air, or really anything to stop it from accelerating and decelerating, it could shoot across the city in a fraction of the time.

Altas almost saved the updated design and then remembered something very important. An inertial dampener. He slipped it inside the cockpit under the pilot's seat, since that was the only space left for him to fit it, and it was done. With that installed, no one inside the vehicle would feel the thing take off or land.

He saved it and then double checked it, nodded at the completed design, and sent the main body to the industrial replicator back at the warehouse. The internal components were sent to the normal replicator, because it could handle the smaller and finer details much better than the larger one could.

Once one was made and assembled, then thoroughly tested to make sure everything worked, Atlas stepped to the warehouse and made several copies. He then called Delamain to let him know he could choose the paint scheme and sent him the APC's specifications, then he sent pictures of the outside of the vehicle and the interior. At the moment, the outside was grey and the inside was beige.

Delamain made an old modem sound and then immediately requested the same phaser upgrades to all of his vehicles, even the maintenance ones he had in storage. Atlas laughed at being proven right and told him he could swing each of them by the office's back door after a taxi run and he would replace the headlights with them.

The AI was very grateful and asked for the outside to be a deep cherry red and the inside a dark blue velvet. Atlas did up a quick mock-up and sent pictures, and Delamain made the same modem noise.

“I would very much like to have 10 of them, please.” Delamain said, very politely.

“You got it, choom. I'll drop them off tonight when I do the Arasaka Tower run.” Atlas promised.

“How much do I owe you?” Delamain asked.

“You know these babies aren't cheap.” Atlas asked and he nodded. “But, they are a brand new and untested vehicle in the real world. If you provide me with the flight data and how well they handle for the next month, I can let them go for cost at 50,000 eddies each.”

“DONE!” Delamain said and dropped half a million eurodollars into the Atlas Incorporated's business account.

Atlas was surprised at the quick agreement. He expected a little haggling and would have dropped down to about half of that. “Are you sure...”

“I expected half a mil for one, which was why I only offered Veder to buy one or maybe 2 from you.” Delamain admitted and then grinned at me. “So, as far as I'm concerned, I bought one and got 9 more for free!”

Atlas laughed. “Okay, yeah. You got me.” He said and looked at the design again. “Do you want them all the same color scheme?”

“Oh, yes. My high end customers adore both colors.” Delamain said. “When they call for a limo and I show up in an armored AV that can land inside the courtyards of their estates? They are going to lose their minds.”

Atlas had to admit that would be pretty funny. “Send me a BD of that if you can.”

“Will do.” Delamain said, happily. “See you later today at about 7:40 A.M..”

Atlas gave him a surprised look. “Why so early?”

“I'm dropping Veder off at the academy at 7:30.” Delamain answered. “I'll zip right over to your place afterwards and then I'm probably going to drool over the new upgrade for a while.”

That made Atlas laugh again. “All right, choom. See you then.”

“Goodbye.” Delamain said and ended the call.

Atlas made the changes to one of the new APCs and then stored it, then went to the cargo hauler and loaded up 4 of the hexagons, with 3 in each and the fourth only had a single one in it. He stepped to the office after that and went in the back, laid down on the surgical table, and slept for the few remaining hours he had left.

It was funny that even though he was using two bodies and had so much to do, he wasn't stressed out about it and was pretty much relaxing and getting things done. Even with only getting a few hours of sleep in each body wasn't detrimental to him. Well, he didn't have to sleep if he didn't want to; but, he figured his mind needed some time off as well and he wasn't going to deny it.

*

The NCPD captain of the Watson District, Robert Kowalsky, sat at his desk and stared at the stack of paperwork on his desk. He had his best detective, Anna Hamill, tracking down all the people on the list to contact their families. They had finally gotten through to them all and told them about what happened, since they had solved all of those missing person cases.

To his utter shock, not one single person wanted the remains of their family members. One of the women even offered to come down to spit on them for being kidnapped and leaving her to raise their kids on her own.

That response had given the man a wake-up call about how callous and jaded everyone in the city was. He knew it was bad, since he had been a cop for a very long time. He just didn't realize it was so prevalent that no one wanted to handle what was usually the responsibility of the family to deal with the remains.

He picked up his desk phone and hit the inter-office line and dialed Anna's desk. That was the only reason he kept the anachronistic thing, because a phone ringing always gained people's attention. If he tried contacting her through her implant, he always had to wait for her to not be busy and then she would answer.

“Yeah, captain?” Anna asked.

“Go ahead and track down that Atlas guy. Let him know that no one wants the remains he found and reported. He can dispose of them in whatever legal means he has at his disposal.” Robert said.

Anna was quiet for a moment. “Are you sure I should do that? I can try to visit the families in person instead of only calling them.”

Robert sighed. “No, that would put you too close to obviously hostile people for no real gain.”

Anna sighed as well. “Okay, captain. I'll handle it.”

Even though Atlas had left contact info for a message, the detective started her search for him. She used what she assumed was a throwaway account for him, since Atlas was obviously a fake name, and tried to trace it back to something more concrete. She knew she was going above and beyond what the captain technically asked for, and she was going to do it anyway.

He asked her to track him down and that was what she intended to do. She wanted to see him in person and she wanted to know what the hell he had done to wipe out the site where the victims had been found. There was no evidence that anything was ever there, let alone a group of trailers full of desiccated bodies and blood splatter.

Anna wouldn't be going to him with the intention of interrogating him; but, if it turned out that way, and as long as no one saw her doing it, then she wouldn't get in trouble for it. Especially since she could charge him with tampering, removing evidence, mishandling bodily remains, and ruining the crime scene.

She wouldn't go hard at first. No, she would be the nice cop at first and would politely ask. If he started to refuse, or gave elusive answers, then she would bring out her bad cop side and really put the screws to him to get him to talk... and he would talk, or she wasn't NCPD Detective Anna Hamill.