I woke a few hours later and felt refreshed. A short nap let me reset and put my current objectives into perspective. Veder me was going to go to school to relax at the academy and he would graduate in under three months near the top of his class, while also working for the Counter-Intelligence Department in the afternoons and on the weekends.

Atlas me was going to sit back and relax while he made tons of money by selling reconstructed garbage. I was also pretty sure Delamain was going to contact me soon to make him more taxis. It was just too sweet of a deal for the AI to pass up.

I climbed out of bed and thought about showering again, shrugged, and used spells to clean myself up. I carried the holster and gun into the bathroom and dressed, added the holster and gun, then slipped on the suit coat to cover it.

I changed the suit into my academy uniform and it still concealed the gun, so I went to the kitchen and grabbed breakfast before leaving the apartment and going downstairs to the lobby. Just as I logged out at the security desk, Delamain pulled up and waited at the front door for me. I left the building and climbed into the backseat.

“Good morning, Delamain.” I said and buckled the seatbelt.

“Good morning, Veder.” The little screen on the back of the seat responded. “Did you sleep well?”

I chuckled at him not so subtly asking how things went with Denise. “Better than I thought.”

Delamain smiled and pulled out into traffic. “Your friend Atlas completed my order last night.”

“You're kidding.” I said and he shook his digital head. “How in the world did he deliver a hundred limos across the city in a single night?”

“You're not going to believe it.” Delamain said and then gave me a play-by-play of everything his cameras and scanners had picked up from all across the city, thanks to his taxis being everywhere. He had seen a lot of angles for both the delivery and the trash pick-up afterwards, so he didn't finish his recollection until we were almost at the academy.

“He made hover tech that could lift something that big and could carry that much?” I asked, pretending to be surprised. “I wonder what kind of normal AV he could make?”

Delamain's image froze briefly and then smiled. “That is an excellent question, V. Could you pass it along to him? I might commission one or two, depending on how they perform and how they look.”

“Oh, he'll definitely make it look good. I can't promise anything about performance, though.” I told him.

“That's good enough for me.” Delamain said as he parked and opened the door. “Have a good day at school.”

“Thanks! You have a good day, too.” I said and stepped out.

Delamain shut the door and drove off with a happy beep of his horn.

I walked over to the gathering students and easily found Evelyn and her small group of friends. All of them had their eyes shift from looking at my face to over my shoulder. They saw I wasn't wearing my backpack and they looked sad.

“It was confiscated and destroyed.” I said and they all gasped, even Carrie. “I didn't realize until then that I shouldn't have brought it to school to show off. I wanted to impress you all with how far along my skills had developed and all I did was cause a security alert.”

“That's how you knew the security team was after you!” Kei gasped. “We didn't see you leave with your backpack and it wasn't in the classroom, so we all assumed you had stashed it in your locker or something.”

I shook my head. “It was there by my chair when we went into The Green Room and it wasn't there when we logged out. I knew something was going on; but, I checked on all of you first to make sure you were all okay before I even thought about where the backpack could be.”

That comment made them all blush slightly.

A new security guard opened the door and he gave me a stern look, didn't see or detect anything, and stepped back to let us all go inside.

“I guess they're going to look at you a lot closer for these last few months before graduation.” Evelyn commented as we walked towards our homeroom. We were almost done receiving new content to learn, according to the course material the teacher gave us at the start of the year. After that, we would be reviewing what we learned to take the final exams.

“I don't blame them.” I said with a slight shrug of my shoulders. “It was a huge hole in their security that I just so happened to bring attention to.”

Carrie gave me a pointed look, as if asking if that was true, so I gave her a slight nod back.

We all entered our classroom and the teacher was there in person for the first time in months. She usually handled things remotely, since there wasn't a chair or login station for her inside the classroom designed solely for the students to use.

“Mr. Veder, you've been requested to appear in the Director of Finance Department's office promptly.” The teacher said and handed me another hall pass. “An escort will be waiting for you by the elevators.”

I held in my sigh at hearing that. Why couldn't they have the guard give it to me, or better yet, have the escort meet me before I walked all the way to the damn classroom before telling me I had to walk all the way back? I took the pass and walked right back out without thanking her. I did hear her sigh before the classroom door closed behind me, so I was sure she got the point.

I took my time as I walked down the hallway, just because I could. Passive resistance had many forms and making them wait longer after they made themselves wait, just seemed appropriately fitting to me.

The man at the elevator had an annoyed look on his face until he saw me. He schooled it to be blank and turned to the elevator and swiped his card. He really should have done that before seeing me, that way it would have had much less farther to go when he actually needed it for a ride.

I made it to the elevator just as it dinged and he gave me an odd look before the doors opened and I walked inside without stopping. He stepped in as well and swiped his card again pointlessly, since you needed the card to enter. Why swipe it again?

I felt him ping the floor we needed to go to and the elevator rose up as it played soft muzak in the background. He didn't speak and I didn't try to initiate a conversation with someone that was so obviously annoyed at the task of retrieving a lowly academy student. I slipped off my academy jacket and pretended to turn it inside out and put it back on again, only now it looked like my corpo suit.

The man gave me a surprised look as we arrived on the right floor. He blanked his face again and led me down the hallway to what was a small office by top executive standards. It had a spectacular view, though. A man sat behind the desk and Denise was sitting in front of it, so I had some inkling of what this was about.

“Thank you, Dennis. You may go.” The man said dismissively.

The aforementioned Dennis barely stopped the sneer on his face from showing as he left.

The man behind the desk noticed, though. “Pissant.” He said and motioned for me to sit. “Mr. Veder, Denise said you're quite smart, so I assume you know why you're here.”

“Yes, sir. Someone was stealing money from the Arasaka Corporation and we found it.” I said and sat. Denise gave me a brief smile and looked back at the man behind the desk.

“Yes, you did. It was excellent work and I am pleased to report that the embezzled money has been reclaimed, the perpetrators punished, and you both have earned promotions.”

Denise caught her breath and calmed herself. I just nodded.

“Denise will become a supervisor and put in charge of three other secretaries on her floor.” The man said and Denise looked really happy about that. “You will be raised from an intern to an actual employee, with the full benefits and responsibilities that entails.”

I didn't see that as much of a promotion, since I was going to be hired as a full employee in three months when I graduated.

He saw the look on my face and he frowned slightly. “You don't appreciate the company's generosity in rewarding you?”

“If I may speak frankly.” I said and he nodded. “Getting something now that I was going to get for free later, isn't a reward or a promotion.”

Denise gasped and stopped herself from whirling towards me to ask me why I was being so stupid. I knew she wanted to, though. 𝙧𝙚𝙚𝔀𝒆𝓫𝓷𝙤𝓿𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝙤𝓶

The man stared at me like I was an interesting specimen. “So, she wasn't lying.”

I didn't respond, since it wasn't a question. Denise physically relaxed, too.

The man opened his desk drawer and handed me a new security card, one that was a single level above my other one. “You are being granted full agent status and not a provisional one, like your contract states when you are hired full time. You will not suffer the usual procedure of having to prove yourself to earn the full rights and privileges a normal agent enjoys.”

I took the card and pocketed it. “Thank you, sir. It's nice to be appreciated.”

The man actually smiled. “You both will also be pleasantly surprised that much nicer apartments are now available in your buildings for you to move into and for the same corporation rate as your old one.”

Denise caught her breath again and couldn't stop herself this time. She turned to me and gave me a look that was full of emotions and most of them were positive. I was sure she was begging me with her eyes to not screw things up for her.

“We can't have valuable company assets living below their means.” The man said and motioned to the door. “I believe you both have things to get back to.”

I nodded and stood, with Denise half a heartbeat behind me. “Sir.” We said as one and we left the office at a normal pace. We made it to the elevator without Denise saying anything and I swiped my card. She almost jumped that the thing opened right away and I put an arm around her waist and pulled her inside.

“Ground floor, please.” I said out loud, so Denise knew she had some time to recover. Her knees gave out and her hands started shaking. I easily held her weight and she turned to cling to me. “Hold the door closed until I say so.”

Denise wasn't crying; but, she was damn close to breaking down. It had been a lot of pressure for someone like her to be under as two corpos discussed things that could have upturned her life in an instant.

“I want you to take Harry's advice.” I whispered to her as she trembled in my arms. “He said he was ambitious but he wasn't suicidal. He's as far up the corporate ladder as he felt safe enough to climb.”

“R-right... yes, I... no more promotions.” Denise whispered back.

“You did well to hold together as long as you did.” I praised her.

Denise let out a soft laugh. “I was terrified you were going to get us killed; or worse, fired.”

I had to laugh at that, since it was something Hermione would have said back in the Harry Potter world. “I think they are just too used to people reacting in fear and they are unsure how to handle anything else.”

“If I ever get called to someone's office like that again...” Denise shook her head and took several deep breaths. “Okay. I'm okay.”

“No, you're not. Open the doors, please.” I said and then thought to the building's VI. Thank you.

You are welcome, Veder. A female voice said back to me.

I led Denise through the lobby and down the hallway to the cafeteria. I bought her something to eat and a drink, then bought the same for myself. I brought her over to my table in the far corner and sat down.

“Sh-shouldn't you get to class?” Denise asked and bit into the sandwich. She made a sound that was half pleasure and half need, then took another bigger bite and chewed slowly.

“I'll catch up later. You need my company right now.” I said and bit into my own sandwich. Nope, they did not get roast beef right at all.

I changed it slightly and took another bigger bite, accidentally mimicking what Denise did. She gave me a tender look and leaned against me as she took another bite of her own.

*

“I want 10,000 units of the memory chips.” The well dressed woman said, a little smugly. “I'll have a contract written up and brought to you by the end of the day.”

Since Cyberdyne Systems was a new company, she knew ordering a huge number of items would tie up their production runs for weeks, if not months, and that would cut out all the incidental sales those items could have earned in the meantime. It was a sneaky way to keep the smaller companies down and poised to be bought out when they couldn't meet the demand in so short a time and had to break the contract and face the penalties.

“Why would we need a contract?” The large muscular man behind the counter asked.

“So I can ensure you're locked in to fulfilling my order before any other customer.” She answered, as if he was stupid. Everyone knew that was why you had contracts.

He gave her a disbelieving look back. “I'm not sure what kind of businesses you're used to dealing with.” He said and then pointed over his shoulder with his thumb towards the back room. “I can fill your order right now. I've got twice that amount in storage.”

“Wh-what?” She asked, shocked.

“There's 100 units per box and 20 boxes per crate. So, 10,000 units is only 5 crates. I've got 10 crates just on the other side of the door.” He told her. “As long as the payment clears, you can take them right now. If you want them delivered, there's a small delivery fee per crate and they can be shipped to any address in the city by the end of the day.”

The woman didn't say anything and just stared at him. Her little ploy had fallen through before she could even implement it. She was authorized to make purchases of a certain amount without having to go to her supervisor for approval, which she would get retroactively as she wrote up the restrictive contract and informed him of the deal. Not being able to clear out all of the saleable stock from a potential rival company hadn't been something she had anticipated.

“Miss? Are you okay?” The salesman asked.

Instead of answering, she turned around and walked back out through the door of what she thought was a new company's display front, that usually only showed items for sale that could be ordered on demand and produced in the necessary quantity. It never crossed her mind that it could be fully stocked with an obscene amount of saleable product available.

The man behind the counter held in his laugh until she was out of sight. As soon as she was, Atlas laughed pretty hard. The woman had been the fourth customer that morning that had wanted to overbuy parts of different kinds to try and run him out of business with restrictive contracts. Supply and demand had worked a certain way in this world and the corporations tried their best to use it to their advantage.

When Atlas simply told them he could give them everything they wanted, they didn't know how to handle it and just walked away without actually buying anything or asking about anything else.

The front door opened and a smug man entered, pointed at the cybernetic eyeball and ordered 20,000 pairs. He didn't even bother asking what the price was, because he had the same thought as the others. To run his production of goods into the ground and buy him out when the company folded.

A few minutes later, the gobsmacked man walked out without any eyes and left Atlas with yet another offer to laugh at. He had known the night before that today was going to be a long day and didn't realize it would be a ridiculous one as well.

The door opened and a man walked in wearing a gold color pants suit and a hat that made him look like a gold plated disco dancer from the 1970s. “I want 10,000 of those fancy cybernetic upgrades for muscles.”

Atlas couldn't contain himself this time and actually laughed out loud, much to the self-important corpo exec's displeasure.