Maniac’s Mayhem: A guide to being a corporate slave

Instead of getting flung out of bed today by an alarm or a pissed-off bodyguard, this morning instead I wake up a lot calmer; I feel someone softly poking my cheeks. I swat at it with my hand and just crawl in closer to the warmth, trying to fall back asleep. I hear a giggle.

“Hey, little puppy,” Cierra whispers into my ear, “it's time to wake up.”

Well, now I am awake. I open my eyes and look around. Well, then, how the heck did I get here? My head is fully resting on her chest while the rest of my body is in this weird sideways position. I don’t even know what to do in this situation. So I close my eyes and try to go back to sleep. I hear more laughing.

“Hey, you are cute, but I have to get to work soon. Can you get up?”

With a great deal of effort, I push my body up and look back at her.

“Do we have to? Can’t we just stay in bed all day?” I ask, trying to wake myself up. I should really figure out how to squeeze more sleep into my schedule. I am beyond tired.

Cierra rubs my cheeks and says, “I would love that, but sadly, I have an important meeting this morning. Will you forgive me?”

Before my brain even registers what I am doing, I say, “Only for a kiss.”

She smiles, then leans in, and we kiss, which is fine enough for my brain to start working properly again. Fuck me, I am so tired that I just slipped into our usual spiel.

I pull myself back from her, trying to get my head straight. Yeah, that is not happening. I'm trying to get my brain working again. Ciera is looking at me with a mixture of fear and disappointment.

“What is wrong?” she asks me.

“Fuck, I am sorry. I did not mean to do that. We have been together for so long that it felt natural to do that.”

She falls down on the bed again. “So it's really over then?”

“I don’t know; I need time to sort it out in my head. Would you be willing to grant me that?”

“Yeah, I want to, but I am not good at waiting.”

“How about Saturday? I'll give you an answer then. Can you wait that long?”

“Guess I have to,” she says while climbing out of bed.

After our little exchange, we got dressed and headed out. Lucky for me, Cierra is nice enough to drop me off at work, so I don’t have to start running there. It's kind of weird being here. I was supposed to be at the office on Monday; it is Wednesday now. Let's just hope that shit has not hit the fan yet.

I make it all the way to my desk and manage to put down my bag before something happens. One of the office drones comes by and tells me that the manager wants to see me. So, I prepare my best business smile before I head to his office.

My boss, Mathéo Le Mond, sits inside the office. Behind him is a display of what I think is Paris. Why he keeps insisting on displaying cities is a mystery to me. Due to our work, our offices are in the middle of the mega building, so there is no natural sun here. Having a screen display the outside is nice, but why a city, not some nature or the ocean? It's not a live feed anyway, so it might as well display something nice.

“Evelin, care to explain why Cierra sent me an email in the middle of the night?” he says as his opener.

“I don’t know, sir; I am not allowed into her accounts, probably for good reasons.” I respond.

“Well, here you go,” he says, sending me the email. “You better have a good explanation for this.”

I open the message and read it: dear uncle, I don’t know what to do. I feel like Evelin is about to break up with me. I understand what I did to her was wrong, but I love her. I have been trying to show her that, but I feel like nothing is working. You work with her most days so you should know a lot about her. Please help me.

I need an explanation after this as well. What went wrong for him to be the first person you asked for help from?

“Sir, we were both a bit charged after dinner last night and had a small fight. We already talked it out, so there is nothing to worry about.”

“You better have; I put a lot of effort into setting you up with her. If you fuck this up, you better be prepared to be tossed around between your coworkers for moral support. A lot of people have been asking for your services, after all.”

Well, okay. So, with our relationship as it is right now, that is going to be an issue. I guess you just volunteered to be my first target, and here I was thinking I would grab the sons first.

‘Lyssa, I just think I found our test target. Please make sure I am undetected while I rifle through his documents.

Certainly, Lyssa will make sure to disable all trackers.

‘Ooh, it has been so long since I did something like this; let's have some fun.’

While my boss continues to chew me out, I strip his computer augs and personal cloud storage for anything useful. For someone working in data security, it is almost criminal how easy it is to get in. I guess it pays to be part of the IT team. Free access to passwords.

After he is done shouting at me and basically dumping a month's worth of work on me, I can finally leave. I make it back to my desk to start working, but before I get really into it, I hear the voice of my favourite person in the world.

“Hey there, killer, did the boss give you a hard time? You look close to death.” Sam says.

“Yeah, something like that. This week fucking sucks,” I say.

“It’s Wednesday morning. The week just started,” she says, sitting next to me while requesting access to my work environment.

“Yeah, but can you blame me? I had two rough days in a row.” I say while showing her all the work I have to do for today.

“I mean, I understand that the incursion was rough. I am happy you are okay, by the way. But weren’t you hanging out with your important girlfriend yesterday? Ooh, wait, is she into something strange, like butt stuff, and is that the reason why you are exhausted.”

I baulk at that and give her a look, but by the big smile on her face, she knows exactly what she is doing. “Fuck you; I need to get back to work before it piles up even more, so if you're just here to mess with me, do it during lunch.”

“Okay, okay, don’t worry. I will go now, but give me half of the files, let’s do this quickly so we can go home at a reasonable hour.”

“Sam, this is why I love you.”

“Don’t say that too loud, don’t want some corpo assassins on my ass.”

After that, we both went back to work. I spent most of the morning going through documents and fixing codes while Lyssa organized what we got from Le Mond. Before I knew it, I had a rudimentary plan going, and all that before my lunch break.

When lunch time does roll around, Sam comes by and I follow her. Sam and I make it to the little spot we usually sit at. It's just some dingy corners a few hallways down from our office, but it gets us out of there at least once a day.

“Here, I made extra food today,” Sam says. “I know you usually don’t have time to get food when you are with your sweetheart.”

“Sam, where have you been all my life?” I say in jest.

“Mostly on the street mugging people or installing ransomware.” Sam says, “So are you going to tell me what is wrong, or are you going to make me guess?”

“How do you know something is wrong?"

“Honey, I have known you for a while now. Whenever something happens outside of your control, you start complimenting me because you are afraid that I will leave you as well.”

“Uuh, well, if you say it like that. It makes me sound like a bad person,” I say. “It's just Cierra; we had a fight, and I am reevaluating my relationship with her.”

“What did you 2 fight about?”

“Basically, she asked me to marry her, and I reacted poorly.”

“Well, that is something. Why did you react poorly?”

“I got scared. I only went out with her because it was the best option out of a lot of poor ones. Being like that for the rest of my life without any freedom scares me.”

“So what? You are afraid that when you get married, she will keep you locked up in some fancy mansion?”

“No, that sounds ridiculous; I don’t know, okay, it’s complicated.”

“Well, in my opinion, if your rich girlfriend wants you, you just grab her ass and say yes, everything is better than living like you are right now. She can literally give you the freedom you want. ”

“So you think I should just bend over and give in?”

“Yes, Evelin, you should. Get out of here, live it up with the rich and famous.”

“That sounds awful.”

“It was just in a manner of speaking. But if I were in your shoes, I would take the chance. Even if I did not like the person, since it would still be a better life. So why are you hesitating?”

“I just don’t know if I could truly love her.”

“Evelin,” she releases a big sigh, “You always look a lot better after you see her, even if that brain of yours does not want to admit it. You do enjoy your time with her, so who cares about the circumstances? Fuck it, let her put some kids in you. Make sure she can’t leave you. What other options do you have?”

I take a deep centering breath then send my local brain worm a message to check that no one is listening in. After I get the all clear, I turn to look Sam straight in the eyes.

“Sam, I trust you more than anything in the world, so could you please keep a secret for me?”

“Yeah, sure, it's like how we promised: We will always work together and share the burdens and the rewards, right?”

“Yeah, so something happened, Lyssa. Can you get that carjacker?”

“Who is Ly…”

 

Class I Remote Activated Infiltration Drones unlocked!

Points reduced to... 210

 

New Purchase: Motorized Vehicle Overwrite Drone mark 3.2

Points reduced to... 180

Instead of the familiar white box. A box appears completely covered in graffiti, with the word Maniac on the top in big blue letters. Guess we have settled on a design then. Sam's eyes are flicking between me and the box. Her mouth open, ready to catch some flies.

“Like I said, a lot happened.”

“Evelin,” she whisper-shouts at me, “you’re a fucking Samurai?”

“Yeah, that appears to be the case.”

“Never mind what I said; you do have other options,” she smiles at me. “Please tell me I get to play with some alien technology as well.”

“Of course, we share in the burdens and in the reward, right?”

“I mean, yeah, but Evelin, I did not really mean like this; it was more about work stuff.”

“So, if you had become a Samurai instead of me, would you not have helped me?”

“Of course, I would help you. You’re my girl. I would give you half the alien tech that I have.”

“Uhm, ooh. I can’t really give you half of the stuff. I do not have all that much, and I still need it for my plans. But when I have enough points, I promise I will buy whatever you want.”

“That is fine, don’t worry, just make sure that when you leave this place behind you, that you take me with you. Also, what is in the box? I am really curious.”

“This is a little surprise for Le Mond. I need to put this in his car, and once activated, I can remotely control it to do whatever I want,” I say while opening the box with the spider-like bot inside. It's not a big thing, about the size of my hand, but it will get the job done.

“Aah, so he is dead, then. What wall are you planning to ram him into?”

“None, I plan to do it a bit more personal,” I say with a smile.

“Fuck that is scary, so when do you want to do this?”

“If all goes according to plan, Friday.”

“And that plan is?”

“Well, that is where I need some help. “

Sam and I discuss the plan. It is really nice to work with someone. We make several backup plans, fail safes, and exit strategies. More than a year of working together every day has turned us into a well-oiled machine, and we get the details sorted out quickly. When we finish, we go back to work. Well, Sam mostly gets back to work with some help from Lyssa. I spent most of my time checking out schedules and sending sensitive files to the people who know how to use them.

When it is around six o'clock, Le Monde and some of the other managers leave. After that, the other employees start to leave until it is eight o'clock, and it's just Sam and me left. I get up, walk to Sam's desk, and sit next to her.

“You sure you want to stay?” I ask, “I am going to be here all night finishing this up.”

“Yeah, it is not the first all-nighter we've had to pull, just need enough caffeine and will be fine.”

We exchange a few more lines of banter, and then we go back to work. With the help of comradery and mostly Lyssa, also disgusting coffee-like muck, we make it through the night and are fully prepared for the shit storm of tomorrow.