Cave

[Jen]

Unit 125-28,
Sansar Apartment Complex
Undercity, Nar Shaddaa

An alarm clock beeped. At first it was but a blur, a low muffled sound that was barely noticed by the sleeping Jennifer. However, as time went on the high pitch and quite frankly irritating sound seemed to be able to probe through the veil of sleep, too loud to ignore a groan was heard from Jennifer as she woke with a startle. She had been sleeping for only a few hours, having had trouble (and little desire) for sleep the previous night.

As she rolled onto her side to stretch a long-fingered hand towards the beeping datapad that rested on a small table besides the couch she lay on, she had trouble even recalling why on nar’shaddaa she had decided to set an alarm to wake her up in the first place.

It was first after she had turned off the constant beeping, having accidentally knocked an empty beer can down from the table in the process of grabbing the datapad, that a faint memory of something about inviting one of her slicer contacts over for a coding session popped into her head. She sighed as she sat up in the couch, her eyes looking over the small and dimly lit mess of an apartment she called home. Even though Jennifer did not really register the fact it would be obvious to most people that the apartment was in severe need of a loving hand. The walls were grey and dull and the air heavy, a scent of smoke and sweat perpetual to the place.

Slowing waking up Jennifer grabbed the remote for the holovision and turned it on, a braindead show with a braindead host suddenly blasting from its speakers. She had only watched for a few seconds as a commercial break was rolled onto the screen and as a cue Jennifer lit up a cigarette. Now she just had to prepare for when her guest showed up.

[member="Marcus Lok"]​

 

[Marcus Lok]

Bandara Street
Sejek Residential District
Undercity, Nar Shaddaa


Marcus winced at the mechanical whine of the street sweeper that seemed to always make its way past him whenever he went down this way. The streets were a bit tight, and the key was to keep your head down whenever a few of the gang members walked past. The last thing you wanted was for them to see your face. Most of them were xenophobes, and this wasn't the sector that Humans normally inhabited. They could usually afford to live in the nicer spots on the moon... If there were any, but Marcus had his own reasons for sticking around town. No one would go looking for a human in the very dregs of an alien sector. Perfect cover.

For once in a long while the sidewalks were not peppered with puddles, and he was glad that he could finally take advantage of the fact. He'd not been outside his apartment for some time, too busy researching the project that they planned to work on tonight. It was something that would help them both. Creating a piece of tech wasn't something you did by just drowning yourself in code all at once. At least not for him. Research had to be done. Comparing different pieces of kit to see what they had and what they lacked. The entire premise was to improve on the old stuff. Countless hours were put in. Researching all of the illegal tech he could find on the CryptNet to see if anyone had made any breakthroughs recently. There had been a few discoveries, but most of the net was silent on any new stuff. Probably because most of the new stuff came from the apartment he was walking to.

He'd been to her apartment before. At least he'd been to what she said was her apartment. He never really knew if she were telling him the truth or not sometimes. This could have just been some sleaze hole that she picked up as a sort of decoy spot. Comfortable enough to live in, but in no way permanent. It wasn't an issue for a slicer to live in one area nowadays simply because there were more ways that one might conceal their identity. If anyone tried to trace Phoenix, well they'd just get lost in the depths of the net before they had any real information. Probably for the best too. He doubted she attracted the best company in the galaxy.

Passing a few more alleyways, he finally arrived at the rusted plaque that belonged to her building. It wasn't run down, just old, and it was probably better than most buildings that ran this way. Most weren't even apartment buildings anymore, just old buildings that the gangs had taken over so that they had somewhere to sleep. Needless to say, he double checked the name of the building before he stepped up to the stoop.

Pressing one of the few buttons that still worked on the resident list, he awaited the familiar buzz that would allow him to step in. Looking towards the observation camera, he hoped she had actually remembered their meeting. Hopefully she wasn't too busy... Sleeping?

| [member="Jen"] |​

 

[Jen]

The little cleaning Jennifer had done to prepare for Marcus’ arrival was barely noticeable. She had taken the effort to clean out her ashtrays and remove yesterdays meal from her working desk, throwing the sterofoam boxes the food had been in into a trashbag and placing it outside her door, having it stand neatly besides two other older and forgotten trashbags that reeked of rot.


She had not done much more than that before she had become preoccupied with browsing several different forums and finishing up tasks on her desktop, leaving the cleaning of the rest of the cramped apartment to be forgotten. Not that she had ever intended to clean it anyway, that would have required way too much work.


It took almost thirty seconds before the buzzer responded to Marcus’ press, no voice greeting him as the door slid open, allowing Marcus to walk into the small hallway where a couple of elevators and a single stairwell that might as well have been a public bathroom could lead him up to level 125.

[member="Marcus Lok"]​

 

[Marcus Lok]

He raised a brow as the door hissed open to reveal the well worn interior of what used to be a relatively well taken care of building. Paint was scraped away from the walls, and there were signs of mice moving around in the pale yellow light. It was as good as one might expect in this sector. His own building was falling apart in similar fashion, but he liked to imagine that it was a bit nicer than this heap. In reality, it was much the same.

With the number of the floor memorized, he had little need to even think about going up the stairwell. The aroma coming from the duracrete steps was enough to put him off of that path originally, let alone the climb. He called the elevator, waiting the few moments that it took for it to reach the bottom floor from its last trip up into the building. Who knew who took it? He seldom saw people in the building besides her, and even then they were refugees looking for a room they might squat in for the night. The inside was dingy, but surprisingly cleaner than the lobby. Tight and confined, the single flickering light revealed only a mild red streak along the door panel... He didn't need to ask what that was.

Thankfully, he soon arrived on level 125 in one piece. He noted the trash bags outside of her door and smiled. She never did change, and that was the one enjoyable constant about her. He approached the door and rapped his knuckles against the scraped up wooden surface, hoping that she might hurry up and not let him stand adjacent to the garbage for too long.

"Come on, already."

| [member="Jen"] |​

 

[Jen]

The advantage of being a hundred or so floors above the ground lobby was that you had a good few minutes before you could expect a knock on your door, leaving time to pull on something other than a tank top as the elevator made its way upwards. After allowing Marcus into the building she finished up a cryptchat conversation with a contact and decided to find a large loose black hoodie from a drawer of clean clothes, having pulled it over her head just as a sharp rap echoed from the door.

After checking the cameras of the hall way on a small screen installed by her door, making sure it was only Marcus that stood outside, Jennifer clicked open the two locks securing the reinforced entrance, pulling it open afterwards. After an episode in the past where the door had been kicked down she had made an example of being certain it could withstand a fair amount of blows. Some might have called the amount of care put in that task paranoia, but on Nar Shaddaa one could never be too careful.

As soon as the door opened a crash of distorted music met Marcus. ”Good to see your ugly face.” She greeted him, a slight smile playing on her pale and gaunt features as she glanced over him with her aureate gaze before taking a step to the side to allow him to enter the small apartment. She looked a lot like herself, dark rings still seen under her eyes, her usual piercings, tattoos and white hair all mostly the same. Though she had grown it a little longer than usually, having it fall a tad bit longer than her shoulders. She’d have to cut it soon, though the patience for such had not been present lately.

Closing the door and making sure the locks had been put back in place after Marcus had entered she turned back towards him, lighting up a cigarette at the same time, gesturing him to grab one if he wanted. "I cleared the desk besides my station if you wanna put up your gear."

[member="Marcus Lok"]​

 

[Marcus Lok]

"Likewise."

The sudden rush of her music that had been muffled before was not an unfamiliar moment for him, she was usually blasting tunes from some underground groups he hadn't ever heard of, but it wasn't half bad. The only real garbage he couldn't stand was coming out of the core. Praises to the Alliance and stuff like that, real poppy/patriotic garbage. That was the stuff that really put him off, and it was a miracle he'd had the foresight to get off that rock and head to the outer rim.

As he stepped through the threshold he couldn't help but notice that she'd pulled out all the stops to greet him tonight. Place was a bit cleaner than he remembered, but that'd explain the new bag that was sitting outside the door. Of course, she could have done it for a thousand reasons other than his coming tonight, but that simply wasn't like her. Not to mention the fact that she'd actually put on some clean clothes, the last time he'd been here he was sure he could still see the grease from those noodles that she'd devoured when they'd first met at that tech meetup in the lower levels. The two were near polar opposites on that front, and he'd become accustomed to being the only one doing laundry in the lower levels of his own apartment. He'd occasionally see this kind old Talz by the name of Tekto, but beyond that, no one seemed to care about using the grimy old washers.

His apparel was pretty normal for the city, the jacket covering up a simple grey shirt he'd brought from home, and a pair of black cargo pants. They weren't altogether fashionable, but they could hold anything he might need while he traveled the stars... Or so he mused. Oftentimes they were empty or stuffed with odds and ends he found on other worlds. On this occasion, he'd brought along a ton of spare authorization chips he'd stolen from other worlds. Kuat, Bonadan, Mon Cala', the list went on and on. In terms of information, they were pretty useful. If they could determine what these highly built up planets used in their everyday security systems, they might well be able to find some new tech that could keep them out of systems. It was a hell of a lot more useful to know what you were up against than to prepare a blind piece of kit based on what you knew about the old stuff.

He took one of the cigarette's not particularly disgusted with the idea of smoking since he'd traveled and seen a bit of what the galaxy had to offer. It was a short walk to the station beside her's and he quickly began to set up his own kit.

"I brought some chips, are we starting from scratch or do we have a base?"

Reaching into his pockets, he withdrew the chips he'd managed to scoop from one source or another and tossed them into a pile on the clear bit of work space. They each had a tape label, recalling the date they'd been acquired and where they were programmed. Alongside the pile, he placed his own laptop device that he'd kept in his flight bag, switching it on and clicking around the display a few times to get to his preferred IDE.

| [member="Jen"] |​

 

[Jen]

While Jennifer could truly not really consider herself to have any friends, a troubled childhood being the main contributor to the lack of such, she had come to consider Marcus close to that. Likely as close as possible. Not only was he -according to herself- an ok slicer, he was also real safe bet. He didn’t meddle with drugs like most of her other so called friends and he was not gang related either. The fact that he had even managed to crawl so far down from the surface of Nar Shaddaa was a mystery to Jennifer still.

She gave his clean and unfashionable attire another glance and with a sort of musing smirk turned to walk towards her kitchen, or whatever other word could describe the tiny corner of the apartment that was comprised of a fridge with a microwave ontop. After procuring two energy drinks from the old and almost empty fridge, she walked back towards her desk, placing one of the cans on Marcus’ table and one on hers as she slumped down into her large office chair.

”Sundu Megacorp were so kind to let me borrow the framework for their reinstallation software. I think we can pretty effectively reverse engineer that. Should help us some of the way at least.” She said as she leaned forward to pick up one of the authorization chips, flipping one in her hand: ”Good score.” She stated quite matter of factly, the faintest hint of a smile heard in her voice as she blew out another cloud of smoke and studied the chip closer under the light of a solitary lamp. "By the way, what have you been up to? Haven't seen much of you in the chats lately."

While it was likely a stereotype somewhere, this slicer cave was a dimly lit one. Not only was this due to the lack of turned on lamps, but also because throughout the whole apartment only a single window could be spotted on the wall above the couch, only large enough for a small individual to stick their head through.

[member="Marcus Lok"]​

 

[Marcus Lok]

Marcus took a quick drag off the cigarette, enjoying the strange flavor that it brought all the way down to his core. He wondered for a few moments whether they were of some special make or if it had simply been that long since his last. It was impossible to say. In truth, he couldn't very well explain why he kept himself in such good shape, but he could definitely describe it as a force of habit. His lifestyle had been kept under close advisement from the very day he entered manhood at the academy, and many of those hard traditional ways of living had not yet left him in his life beyond the Clans. He'd been taught to keep himself above average, and that was the plain and simple of it. Needless to say, many of the activities that seemed to fuel the nightlife of the under city would have been a bit out of place on his home world. He certainly didn't call people on their behavior, but he seldom felt the need to indulge.

Slowly though, he'd begun to feel that he'd been slipping. He didn't shave everyday now. And he was beginning to look less and less like a professional and more and more... Well... Skeevy. He wasn't ashamed of the fact, though. He thought it made for more of a weathered and experienced look to walk around with a bit of scruff on his face. Certainly would make him less of a mark on the streets.

"Well let's see..."

He made to answer her question after he'd gotten himself a bit more relaxed and taken a sip from the can he'd been provided. It was good stuff, chemical ridden and a familiar taste. It was the kind he had at home, mostly off of her recommendation. Stuff had a bit of a shock to it.

"Whenever I haven't been looking up dirt for this new kriff, I've found time to get into some hobbies... Yeah. I took up model star ships. I've been working on my writing too, wholesome stuff y'know?"

He gave her a friendly smirk as the explanation had been completely saturated with sarcasm. What would he have been doing anyways? The project had him locked up near 24/7 trying to figure out what he could possibly bring to the table before he'd gone to meet her tonight. Beyond that he was prone to drinking in some pretty low down spots near the 11th Sector Plaza. Not wanting to be mean, however, he offered a bit of a shrug and turned back to his monitor to give her a real explanation.

" 'Been trying out a few new spots around... Not much to report there. What have you been up to? Any of those bikers steal your heart yet?"

| [member="Jen"] |​

 

[Jen]

The crack and fizz of compressed air was heard as Jen popped open her own energy drink, though she did not take a sip from overly sweetened can just yet. She made a small grunt of amusement at his joke while she continued to look at one of the chips he had brought, leaning back in her chair and placing her feet, wearing black socks on her table. “That would be something, you sitting and painting model star ships. You do sort of look like one of those nerds that does that.” She smiled slightly at the thought, taking a sip from the can and a drag from her cigarette afterwards, the ultimate health combo. She continued to speak, replying to his tease:

“Not much to steal, but you know I don’t do dating. Shit sucks and is corny as fuck. But nah I have been hanging around with the gang from losers bar. We had the craziest trip, took like two bars of some weird stuff a mate had gotten us and then we tried out this new reality simulation game. You should try that at some point. We nodded off for hours.” She finished, her tone having been sort of dull throughout the whole story even though her words seemed excited in and of themselves, like a sort of memorized speech of making it out to be a better experience than it probably was. “Other than that the usual. Just lying low, doing my thing.”

She sat up properly in her chair and turned back towards her station, placing the chip Marcus had brought into a slot in a small machine by her desk, starting to scan the contents and architecture of the chip for information.

 

[Marcus Lok]

Marcus cracked a smile.

"What'd you do in the Sim? More drugs? Maybe you got to live your dream life in the Core?"

He'd lean more towards the former. Nar Shaddaa was a moon with half a million things to do in a night, but no real reason to come back and do them. Spacers enjoyed the casinos and the girls that lined the catwalks of the upper city near the pads, but when you were a local, things changed. He couldn't remember the last time he'd walked into a casino with the intention of actually gambling away the credits he earned from the jobs that swung his way, and he'd never messed with any of the girls near the promenade. It was strange to think that a city world, known for its absolute liberation in the form of drugs and crime, could get so boring after a while. Seemed all they did nowadays was hang around in bars and get high... Well she got high. More than once she'd tried to push the stuff on him, and he had always held out, thinking it would be some nasty kriff that would melt his brain like a yolk, but recently he'd been feeling like he was near his breaking point.

Why resist? It might bring some much needed zest into his life.

"I don't even want to think about what you took in. Y'know all of that stuff comes from those aliens up at the docks, right? Stuff's exotic, could be only good for Xenos, y'know? What if you take a hit of something meant for a Herglic and your brain explodes? I'm tellin' ya', one day that stuff's gonna eat you alive."

He shook his head in mock shame, sounding a lot like his mother who'd told him the same thing. Or somewhere near that, anyways. He knew she could take care of herself on that front, or he guessed she did. She might very well just enjoy any kind of high you could get in the city, regardless of where it came from. And there was certainly no shortage of that sort of stuff on-planet.

With an idle hand, he picked up one of the chips that still sat in the pile, regarding it with a bit of curiosity before he plugged it into his own machine and began to analyze the structure and features of the programmable chip.

"Kuat's workin' with some new chit... What's on that thing?"

| [member="Jen"] |​

 

[Jen]

”Yeah it probably will…” Her sentence faltered somewhat. The idea of drug addiction, of being eaten alive by substances wasn’t exactly a new one to Jennifer. She had been through that hell a couple of times and by definition she could still be considered an addict. Her only safeguard to remain functioning was a clinging onto a tight and regulated dose schedule. She was thankful she had slicing, had she not been as dedicated and talented she would have been dead by now. Or worse.

“Yeah it probably will, but who wants to end up being boring and grey anyway. Also since when did you start smoking? You better be careful the shigt might kill you.” She retorted, a slight smile forming on her gaunt face. Soon a few clicks on her keyboard was heard as she scrolled through the analysis program open on one of her monitors, popping up text fields filled with gibberish, seemingly random numbers, symbols and letters. Or more accurately, encrypted code. “This one is encoded to hell and back.” She muttered, partly surprised at the complexity shining at her from her monitors. “Where did you say you got this again? It has to be some high priority access codes.”

Opening up several different custom made programs, she started to run the piles of encrypted data through different sorting techniques and pattern recognition methods. Trying to find ways or loop holes in the chip to be able to decrypt it in a shorter amount of time. Luckily, cryptography was one of Jennifers particular strong suits. The pure complexity and ingenuity involved in making something unreadable to others, or making something previously unreadable comprehensible tickled certain parts of her brains. Like a treasure hunt only the most skilled could participate in.

"Looks like this is gonna be a great night." She grinned, taking another sip from her drink and rolling up the sleeves of her oversized black hoodie, the dark small damp room was sort of warm after all considering it had to deal with the body warmth of two beings as well as a couple of computers and a server or two.

[member="Marcus Lok"]​

 

[Marcus Lok]

Marcus half listened to her as she made a point about the cigarette. He was looking for one chip in particular that he'd found interesting when he'd acquired it. If there was one thing he was sure of, it would be that he had to get a better labeling system. Labeling these small chips was a task in itself, and the small strips of tape that hung away from any of the important bits of the chip would require a special codex that he'd made up in his spare time. It wasn't anything special, just a long... long list of planet names and the new abbreviations he'd given them. On the chips themselves, the identity was given away by these abbreviations followed by a couple of numbers. These numbers weren't the service tags of the chips or anything that the factory had provided, but instead they represented where he'd found them. 1's were military installations, 2's were corporate headquarters, and the list went on like that from there up to 9.

"Where didn't I get this kriff? Most of it's from high-pop worlds. Kuat and the like. Got a few from the core, too. I sent the... Code thing that I made up to your pad. Just match it up with the tape. You wouldn't believe the kinda things you can find at tech swap-.. There it is."

He picked out the chip he'd been hunting for, confirming to himself that it was by reading off the digits.

CORU53

It was a chip he'd snagged off the net for a good chunk of chits, hoping that it might be worth the cost. The chip itself had supposedly been snagged from one of the upper level hospitals on Coruscant, and not only that, but from their genetic storage facility. Hospitals usually ended up having the best kit when it came to security, too much valuable information to protect behind only a few doors. They couldn't afford to be hacked. The military was probably next up on his list, but even most governments didn't outfit their militaries with the latest protection against network threats all the time. It was often seen as an unimportant area of protection by many upper level authorities, especially when it came to budgeting. Capital ships usually won out over NetSec funding.

He set to work on it, sending his own piles through the chip, getting back a regular feed of information that at least led him to believe that the encrypting technology used on the device was new... Or at least new-er. Sometimes it was hard to tell if stuff was new or if it was coming from a completely different approach in terms of how it handled incoming data. It helped that company's usually stuck to an established template though, and that made their jobs easier.

"Oh yeah... This is what I call a rager."

[member="Jen"]​

 

[Jen]

Jen was quiet for the next 45 minutes or so as she became completely captivated by the task in front of her, the only thing heard from her being soft breathing, an occasional groan, a: ”what the fuck” and constant, unrelenting typing on her keyboard.

As the minutes had stretched on however one would notice that she had slowed her typing and once she finally stopped she leant back in her chair with a half satisfied smile on her face as she looked at one of the monitors of her computer. Upon it one could spot JAW_Br43KEr, one of her personal decryption plug and play softwares starting to go to work, an empty loading bar appearing on her screen as rows of text scrolled past the bar at blinding speed on a document behind it.

She had used the last forty five or so minutes preparing the information she had gotten from the chip Marcus had come with for decryption and now that JAW_Br43kEr was at work there was not much left for Jennifer to do until it was done. At least with that chip. However, a small victory deserved a small break.

With a satisfied sigh she turned her chair towards Marcus and rolled it a bit towards his screen to check what he was up to, glancing at it briefly before she looked at him. She had not really noticed it until now, but ever since Marcus had arrived in her apartment he had for inexplicable reasons kept on his jacket.

While the dark small room was already tepid the urge to make fun of him was hard to resist. With a slight smile she stood up and walked towards the refrigerator and on the way there pressed the climate control pad installed on the wall a few times, a tattooed hand navigating the controls and raising the room temperature by a good amount of degrees. Obviously she was wearing a hoodie herself, but she figured he would complain sooner than her. With a slight hint of amusement in her voice she asked: “Found anything on your chip yet?”

[member="Marcus Lok"]​

 

[Marcus Lok]

It was somewhat interesting how fast time could move when you were engrossed in something on the pad. You got sucked in, and if you lost track of yourself you'd see how it could happen for hours, or even days. It wasn't the worst feeling in the world either. There was something about the environment in these scenarios that almost brought a tranquility to the work. He thought it was the music. A good atmosphere always helped him work, and most of the stuff that Phoenix turned on was palatable if not enjoyable. He sat, typing away and enjoying the bev that sat next to his pad until the contents ran empty. He'd crushed it pretty quick, and for a moment he wondered why he was so hot. It wasn't long before the fool realized he'd never taken his jacket off, and in the most nonchalant manner he could muster, he pulled it off his person and let it drape over the chair as if he'd meant to keep it on for that long.

The relief from being free of the oppressive jacket was a bit liberating in itself, and in the few moments that it took to acclimate to the room temperature, he was happy to look off towards Jen, who'd positioned herself near the thermostat. That little hut'uun had tried to cook him alive. He eyed her up and down, glaring at her for a few moments before returning his gaze to his screen.

"Yeah, actually... They're using a new encryption matrix in these hospital locks... At least on Coruscant. Haven't been able to crack it yet, but it responds pretty quick when you probe it. If it were connected to the real lock, I'll bet I would have tripped it five times by now. Good thing we're just testing..."

Of course if it were an actual job he'd take the lock much more seriously. For now, he was content to test the program's capabilities in dealing with simpler threats. A few pings here and there would tell him a lot about the encryption that had been put on the lock, and a smile grew across his face as he inched closer to making some sort of breakthrough.

"Thing trips on the simple stuff. I'm gonna give it a shot with something I cooked up, but if it still locks up i'll need a drive with that magic poodoo you got over there."

Of course, he didn't know whether or not his fairly new software would do anything to the complex security matrix that had clearly taken some sec-firm a couple of weeks to set up, but it was worth a shot. The worst thing that could happen was the lock would trigger again, and he'd have to manually reset it. His kit didn't have a name yet... He only liked to name things that he knew worked through on the job practice. He thought it might be bad luck to just shove something out there with a cool nickname and have it flop on release.

"So what do you wanna call the new thing? Gotta come up with a cool tag before it hits the Net."

[member="Jen"]​