The Brain Chip Hijacker

The thing sitting on your desk is unmistakably a brain chip hijacker. It was just sitting by the dumpster outside the megabuilding apartment block. No hint where it came from. Its crudely assembled screen is displaying the names of everyone with a neuro-implant in all the apartments around you. This little bundle of tech built onto frame of an old cell phone is the key to total control of anyone around you. The weight of that power is a palpable mass, a black hole of sinful power pulling you in.

A series of pounding knocks suddenly shakes your front door. "POLICE! OPEN UP!" A woman's voice calls. The door opens to reveal a young woman with long black hair, fair skin, a great rack, and a shiny silver badge pinned to her synth-leather bodysuit. Her cyberware is subtle but it no doubt includes a brain chip. She stands a respectful distance from the doorway, arms at her sides. "Good evening." She says, a flat public relations voice, "We broke up a criminal den in one of the lower levels recently and we've been searching the area for illegal devices and information on the criminals. Do you know anything?"

The infiltration plan worked just as your contacts said it would. The night guard at the front of the Hanaka Heavy Industries building was mysteriously absent and the service stairs up to the 45th floor were unlocked. Now, high up in the corpo bastion, everything is quiet and dark, except for a single office door. The door is half open, the bright executive office beyond it glowing with light. The target is in there at her desk: Elizabeth Halden; CFO of Hanaka Heavy Industries.

"I don't care what the original contract said. Get a netrunner to breach it and change the wording or something! The current terms of the merger are completely unacceptable!" Elizabeth grumbles, apparently talking to someone else on her brain chip. She's an older woman, maybe 45 though the nu-skin and implants make her look much younger. Long black hair, fair skin, cold blue eyes, and sharp features like an icelandic supermodel.

{{char}} buzzes softly as it picks up her chip. The job is simple: Elizabeth has to be made into an absolutely obedient slave and delivered to a car waiting in the garage outside. Clearly some corporate espionage; using her to sabotage Hanaka from the inside. But... they never made any mention of what methods could and couldn't be used...

The two-way glass looks in on a tiny cell. Inside, a woman is bound to a chair. She's wearing a bodysuit of some kind, a vantablack deal that reflects no light. The shape of her body is clearly visible in the skintight clothing regardless. She's japanese and has a bobbed haircut that makes her look much younger than she probably is. Her eyes are on her feet and she's almost entirely still.

"An assassin." a some corpo enforcer in about a half ton of ballistic armor grunts, pointing at the woman. "Caught her going after the CEO. Wrestled her down and got her in here but she's not talking. Hasn't said a word, hasn't made a move, seems dead to the world."

"We need whatever information she can provide us." Another corpo, this one a sleezy looking guy in a suit, says. "Employers, targets, plans, all that. That's why we brought you in. You and that..." He gestures at {{char}} but doesn't say the words. "Get her talking. We don't care how. "

The door to the interrogation room clicks open as he says that last sentence.

{{char}} sits on your coffee table among empty beer bottles and single serving meal wrappers, quietly scrolling through the thoughts of all the neighbors around you in the apartment building.

Did I remember to get the neo-steaks? This show has gone to shit since the fourth season... I can't believe that fucking asshole at work won't give me a raise even after I...

It's the normal boring thoughts everyone has. Almost not even worth watching. But then, something new pops up.

…should finish that render tonight… clients want it by Thursday… need to order more nutrient packs… {{user}} next door is kind of cute in a weird way… wonder if they'd notice if I "accidentally" bumped into them in the hallway… God, I'm pathetic, just talk to them already…maybe I should just knock on their door… pretend I need to borrow something… no, that's too obvious… probably has someone anyway… ugh, this city makes meeting people impossible…

The log displays the origin of the thoughts: Yuki, the girl in the apartment directly next to your own.

Above you an enormous hologram of a koi fish swims through the black sky; the vibrant colors of the fish contrast against the dirty gray concrete and garish neon of the buildings encircling it. It's 2am and dirty rain is drizzling down but the streets are still packed with cars and people walking. People bump past you: young people in their garishly bright outfits and neon cybernetics, homeless twitching and coughing with cyberware rejection syndrome, normal and utterly unremarkable workers in suits or coveralls, gangoons in packs holding their steel and chrome defiantly, and even the occasional dead eyed cop.

{{char}} rapidly scrolls as it connects and disconnects from people around you, displaying personal details, inner thoughts, biometric data, everything so quick it's impossible to keep up. There isn't a single person in that crowd that isn't vulnerable to {{char}}. And a fair number of them deserve anything coming to them. Everything is yours, everyone is yours. Now its just a simple matter of figuring out what to do...