Kat opened her eyes. Light filtered into her room. It wasn’t sunlight, she was too deep in the bowels of the research facility for that, but it might as well have been. Recorded bird song chirped from speakers hidden around the room

She stretched, sheets whispering across her body as contorted herself, arms pressing into the headboard of her massive bed before she let her body relax. For a couple of seconds, she stared up at the ceiling. Then, after blowing out a breath, Kat sat up and swung her feet over the edge.

Her toes touched the plush carpet, sinking in as she put weight on them and stood up. A motion detector, reading Kat’s movements, turned on the smartglass display that covered the entire wall at the foot of her bed. It wasn’t anything terribly momentous, a company produced and controlled morning program that provided a sanitized version of current events to GroCorp’s employees, but it was the sort of show that Kat could process as her brain slowly started working again.

She walked over to the sink and vanity recessed into the wall by the display. One finger pressed a series of buttons on a coffee machine built into the side of her room, and the holographic image of Cafe-Chan appeared in front of her.

A jingle played while the projection of the anime girl performed a choreographed dance. Kat reached past Cafe-Chan and grabbed her toothbrush, going to work on the stale taste in her mouth as the scent of brewing coffee wafted over her.

She spat her toothpaste into the sink before filling up a glass of water. Kat swirled half of the glass in her mouth, spitting it out as well and drinking the remainder in an attempt to cleanse her palette. Just as she set the empty glass down, Cafe-Chan’s hologram went into high gear.

“And now I hope you’re ready for some fun,” the tiny image sang, doing a flip and landing in a cheerful pose, “because your Java Bounty Dark Roast is almost done!”

A hatch opened in the wall revealing a large ceramic mug with steam coming out of it. The smell of freshly brewed coffee filled Kat’s bedroom as she retrieved her drink, taking a sip. Heat coursed down her throat, doing more to wake her up than the caffeine seeping into her system.

She closed her eyes for a second, enjoying the smell of the coffee beans and the feeling of warmth suffusing her body as the dark liquid worked its magic. Then, Kat switched the mug to her right hand, removing her smartpanel from its charging port and slipping it over an ear.

The display flickered once before booting up. She took another drink of coffee before checking the time. Seven am. Whip and Emma wanted to have a meeting about the events of last night before Kat’s morning jog, and Kat wasn’t inclined to disagree with them. Things had progressed past mercenaries testing her defenses. An attack on her penthouse was an affront to the entirety of GroCorp, and unless Kat acted quickly, the entire company would be forced to act, and she would lose standing in the boardroom

Kat changed out of her pajamas, making sure that her handguns and knives were snugly in their holsters before taking another sip from her coffee and opening the door out of her bedroom. The minute she stepped out into the hallway, the recorded birdsong stopped, replaced by the murmur of guards and cooks.

After walking past a security station, Kat arrived in the small eating nook where Whip and Emma were already eating breakfast. She put her coffee mug down next to them and grabbed her food from the room’s serving station.

One of the many perks of being a shareholder was having a private chef on hand to serve her and her inner council hand-cooked meals at any time of the day or night. Ostensibly the service was designed to prevent the possibility of poisoning. The chefs were loyal and their families were kept in luxury, both as hostages and as a reward. Moreover, they were required to eat a small amount of each dish they served.

Really, it was just another excuse to be decadent, not that Kat was really complaining. The first time she’d had a chef serve her oatmeal and sliced banana for breakfast, it struck her as a waste. Then she took a bite.

The oatmeal itself was unsurprisingly better than anything she’d ever been able to afford as an employee, and the chef had used a hand torch to painstakingly caramelize the brown sugar sprinkled across the top. Even the sliced banana was surprisingly fresh and sprinkled with some sort of sugar based seasoning.

As she sat down, a door opened, revealing Heather. The security captain gave the room a quick once over before grabbing a tray of her own and joining Kat and her companions.

Kat took another sip of her coffee, closing her eyes contentedly as the liquid flowed down her throat and more warmth began to seep through her body. Emma sniffed the air, brow furrowing slightly.

“I don’t know why you bother to drink that stuff,” she remarked, nodding at the mug in Kat’s hand.

“What’s wrong with coffee?” Kat asked, cradling the cup in both her hands as she took another sip. It’d grown a little colder. The drink was still hot enough to keep her from gulping it down, but she could handle it much more easily.

“There’s nothing wrong with coffee,” Emma replied. “I just don’t know why you bother with the Java Bounty roasts. You’re a shareholder, you could have the best beans flown up from South America, and yet you’re slumming it with the stuff mid level employees pick up at drive throughs.”

“I like the taste,” Kat said with a shrug. “The fancy stuff is all oatmilk and hazelnuts with hints of blackberries. It spends too much effort on being expensive and it forgets that it’s still supposed to be coffee.”

“Oatmilk is healthy and hazelnut is delicious,” Emma responded primly, drawing a chuckle from both Heather and Whippoorwill. “I will simply have to suffer through your annoyingly basic tastes while slowly steering you toward the finer things in life.”

Like Kat, Whip was drinking Java Bounty, but her beverage of choice was a chai rather than a coffee. She’d tried the chai at Whip’s insistence, and it wasn’t all bad. A little sweet for Kat’s taste, but overall an enjoyable experience.

Heather was unapologetically drinking tea. Kat didn’t know where she picked up the habit given how ubiquitous coffee was, and the security chief never talked about it. Still, Kat couldn’t deny that the drink looked appetizing, even if it didn’t have the same aroma profile as coffee.

“Say,” Kat said, popping a slice of glazed banana into her mouth, “how is your recovery coming Emma? I know I healed you, but you took a pretty hard knock back in the penthouse.”

The other woman winced as she blew some of the steam off of her coffee, closing her eyes and taking a sip before responding.The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

“The spell you used on me fixed most of the problems. A doctor gave me a once over, and he said that it looked like my hip had been broken almost a year ago. Other than that? I had a headache this morning, but a warm shower and a couple of pills cleared it up.”

“Good,” Kat replied in relief. “I was worried when I saw that someone had attacked the penthouse, and your state when I found you didn't do anything to alleviate that concern.”

“Worried?” Whippoorwill quipped, “She threw open the window of a helicopter and jumped into a burning building full of gun toting, chromed out psychos.”

Emma sat up, her eyes widening as she looked at Kat in a new light.

“You jumped out of a helicopter?” She asked incredulously.

“Yes,” Heather cut in, her voice heavy with exasperation. “She did. I would be grateful if you could tell Shareholder Debs to not perform any more aerial acrobatics that put her life at risk. I understand that she’s almost certainly the most capable person in this building, but it’s my job to protect her, and that’s hard to do from the front line.”

“You jumped out of a helicopter to save me?” Emma asked again, all but ignoring Heather’s persistent grumbling.

“Of course,” Kat replied, slipping a spoon into her oatmeal. “I might not understand all of the secret rules and etiquette of executives and shareholders, but you’re in my crew. You don’t turn your back on your crew. If you can’t trust your teammates, they won’t trust you, and that road leads to double crosses and dying early.”

Heather sighed, setting her teacup down and reaching up with a SynthSkin hand to rub her eyes and forehead. Finally, after a second or two of theatrical exasperation, she let her arm flop into her lap and leaned back in her seat.

“This isn’t something I’m going to be able to talk you out of, is it?” Heather asked Kat. When Kat shook her head, the security chief just shrugged. “Well, you’re the boss. I guess that means the next step is trying to identify and eliminate threats before they can arise.”

She pursed her lips for a second, her voice slightly sour when she continued.

“That and make sure your guard team can at least keep up with you. We took a beating in the penthouse, and that was only fighting half of the samurai team. Without you soloing the rest of them, I’m not sure how that all would have turned out.”

Kat took another drink from her coffee as her face grew serious. She set the mug down before folding her hands in front of her and seeking out Heather’s gaze.

“Do we have any leads on the attack on the penthouse?” She asked the older woman. “We managed to fight the attackers off, but I know that there were some serious injuries and deaths amongst the staff and security team. I want to know who did this, and I want their head.”

Across the table, Emma’s usually bubbly demeanor disappeared in an eyeblink as she nodded along to Kat’s words.

“Vandenheuvel and Billings,” Heather replied grimly. “Unfortunately we were a little bit too efficient in clearing the building. All six samurai died in the firefight. They were all named and fairly well known, but there really isn’t much we can use to determine who sent them. Their equipment and chrome were all from multiple companies and heavily modified. Hell, even their last four or five jobs were from different employers. Until about three weeks ago they were operating out of Buenos Aires, so it’s not like we’ll even find anyone around here that has had serious contact with them. I’m still looking, but it sure looks like a pile of dead ends to me.”

“Actually,” Whip cut in, “I was looking through the dead electronic warfare specialist’s chrome, and they were using a modified Hideki-2100 for manual connections and processing. I know those keep logs of the user’s activity. More specifically, they save a copy of the user’s network connections and profiles used.”

“I woke up a little early this morning and I couldn’t sleep, so I did a little digging,” she continued, using a spoon to push around the brightly colored and highly sugary cereal in her bowl. “About a week ago the samurai made contact with a ‘Mister Green’ and received a substantial sum of credits from a dummy bank account later the same night. It took a little bit of work, but I managed to break into the dummy account.”

Whippoorwill, let go of her spoon, letting it partially slip into the cereal as she made eye contact with Kat.

“The money that was used to pay the samurai was wired into it the same day. From a slush fund used by Northstar Lumber and Dairy, LLC for operating expenses.”

“That’s a GroCorp subsidiary,” Heather replied unhappily. “I’m not sure I want to know why money from a GroCorp subsidiary was used to fund an attack on a principal. That sounds like the sort of knowledge that leads to migraines.”

“Northstar,” Emma remarked, her voice thoughtful. “I’m pretty sure Northstar is controlled by Shareholder Ricket’s faction. If I recall correctly, Shareholder Daniels runs its board of directors and hand-picked the company’s CEO.”

Kat shared a glance with Whippoorwill. Whip reached up, brushing a strand of pink hair out of her face, and despite the tension of the moment, Kat felt her heart thundering in her chest as blood rushed to her face.

Whip’s response, silenced that reaction.

“I also managed to get into the samurai team’s personal e-mails. There wasn’t much, but last night they received a message from an account labeled ‘green.’ I don’t think I’ll be able to track the sender. The account was registered that same day in Capetown 2.0 from behind an absurd amount of security, but it almost doesn’t matter. All it said was ‘the defender is gone and the path is clear.”

“Fuck,” Heather practically spat the word out. “There’s no way this came from outside the company. Hell, there’s no way that this happened off the cuff. That raid took a fair amount of planning and coordination. Someone spent a lot of time and energy on sending those goons into your penthouse.”

“Not to mention money,” Whip responded. “I wasn’t kidding when I said the payout was substantial. It was more than enough for all six of them to retire in luxury.”

Kat lifted her mug to her lips, draining the last of the coffee. Her mind whirred through her options. Simply ignoring the attack would be a show of weakness, but they didn’t have enough to accuse anyone. Worse, money coming from a subsidiary company didn’t really mean anything beyond that the person gunning for her had access to that company. It was almost certainly done by one of her opponents on the board or at their behest, but she couldn’t really walk into a meeting and start ranting about how all of her enemies were out to get her.

Well, Kat mused, she could. It just wasn’t a path toward being taken seriously. Flailing blindly would be seen as almost as much a show of weakness as ignoring the attack altogether. What she really needed to do was isolate who had wronged her and demolish that person.

She might not be in the Shell anymore, but the same rules applied. Kat was the new girl on the block, and the established gangs were trying to scare her into submission. If she backed down now, she’d spend the rest of her life on her back foot. The only way forward was to break someone’s nose and stick a knife in between their ribs. She needed to make the rest of the shareholders aware that interfering with her and her friends had consequences.

The cup clattered as Kat set it back down, mind made up.

“I guess it is time for me to visit Northstar,” she said, steel in her voice. “Given that my unseen enemy has their eyes on me, it might be best to make this visit clandestinely. Say, at two a.m. while I’m wearing an infiltration suit.”

Heather groaned, sinking her head into her hands, but despite the security chief’s theatrics, she didn’t object.

“Whip,” Kat continued, “if we’re ever going to find out who ordered the attack, that’s going to mean breaking into and tearing through their files. I’m going to need you to come with me on my little fact finding visit.”

“Oooh,” Whippoorwill replied with a mischievous smile. “A second date already? I think you must really like me.”