Chapter 134: Reactionary Measures

Chapter 134: Reactionary Measures

“Hurry up and speak, corpo. We don’t have all night for you.” A lanky man said in an aggressive tone to me, standing at the forefront of his little group of four.

“Marcio, was it? Do you mind if we spoke in a more private setting?”

“Ha, always the same with your kind. Hurry up and lead the way.”

I exchanged looks with Thorne and nodded before we made our way away from the general area of the bar toward one of the private rooms.

I settled on one side of the sofa within the room while Thorne ordered for us on the terminal. The mercenaries swiftly planted themselves opposite to me and immediately resumed the conversation.

“Go on and ask your questions, but don’t get your hopes up. We won’t be answering anything we shouldn’t.” Their lanky leader declared, and his teammates all nodded in unison with him.

“That’s quick a prompt response. Do even know what I was going to ask?”

“We know you’re acquainted with Trisha and her crew. Of course, you want to ask about the deets regarding our gig. We know, they know, the QGs know, everyone knows.”

“If you’re so sure, then why did you come?”

“I’m not sure why our QG and Trisha’s crew even bothered to ask us to, but we aren’t turning down an easy favor from the likes of them.”

“Well, know that I didn’t come here to ask you about your employer or for you to recount your experiences of the gig. You’d think I would ask your QG for, right?”

“Then what are you here for? Can’t be for Rainbow here, that’s for sure.” He pointed a thumb at one of his team members, a girl with a long ponytail that shared the same colors as a rainbow.

“Just to talk about the mercenary life. Relax, let us enjoy a drink first.”

The lanky man, Marcio, snickered as he sank into his seat. I glanced over at Thorne in time to find him opening the door for the server to bring our drinks in. We all stayed silent as the server placed down several large mugs until he exited the room.

“So tell me, Marcio. What are the rates to hire a typical outfit nowadays in Lion City?”

“Why are you asking us? That’s a question for the QGs.”

“No, I want to know your price. To hire you directly.”

“...That depends on the details. We don’t do any combat gigs or other risky stuff without a QG involved, though.”

I noticed he was quick to soften his tone when we talked business, so I pressed on.

“What about for smaller tasks? Maybe some consultation work?”

“Bullshit, we’re mercenaries. We don’t do your corpo busywork type of dog shit.”

“I may have worded it inappropriately. What I mean is to consult your tech person and cy-sec person. After all, not every outfit has outstanding talents like yours.”

“So you are here for Rainbow...” He glared at the woman in question as she let out a giggle. “That stuff is their solo gig. I don’t get involved, so you ask them yourself.”

I looked over at the girl in question, who sported colorful hair.

“Rainbow is it? Are you the tech person or cy-sec specialist?”

She giggled at my question.

“The latter. Gunther is our tech guy with the delicate touch.” She chuckled to herself as the man she was teasing shook his head.

“Right. Do you two mind if I talked to you, then?”

To my surprise, they nodded without hesitation. Rainbow was the first to respond, followed by Gunther.

“My rates start from 10k.”

“Eight thousand.”

I nodded. “Perfect, then I’ll speak to you one at a time, then.”

“You’re not going off somewhere with my team members where I can’t keep an eye on you.” Their leader quickly interjected.

“There’s a long list of candidates. We expected this level of aggression when expanding into the cybernetic market...just we thought they would be more direct about it.”

“See, I told you to be more wary of the traditional schemes and tricks rather than brute force. These are corpos we’re up against, after all.” Leo chimed in, with the others following right after him.

“Intelligence director! How come we haven’t caught wind of this any earlier?”

“Whatever, it’s more important to stop the bleeding and retain the trust of our customers! Everything else is secondary.”

The meeting room quickly descended into chaos as various parties voiced their opinions and solutions. I let them vent it all for a few moments before clearing my throat to signal for them to quiet down.

“I don’t know who the perpetrators are, but someone has been tampering with our products at various clinics. I found a mercenary team doing so in Lion City.”

“Then we must respond at once!”

“There isn’t much we can do except warn the clinics. We can’t cover so much ground...” Claire muttered.

“We can do that, but what we need to focus on is protecting our brand. We likely won’t be able to prevent all incidents of sabotage, so we need to focus on dealing with disgruntled clients and protect our reputation while we work on finding the mastermind,” I said to the room.

“Got it! I’ll work with the finance department to revise our compensation plan right away,” Claire responded.

“Good. And any word for Fitel on the intel-gathering job you gave him?”

“...Not yet, but I’ll check in with him later.”

“It’s fine. I’ll go call him right after this. You take care of the other stuff.”

I can’t wait to hear what he has to say. Looking back at it now, it seems like he knew something about this plot against us. He could’ve at least warned us more directly, though...

Drew - Halls Corporation

“All of you stay tuned for all the changes to our compensation plan for our clients who have been confirmed to have legitimately bought our products. That is all.”

The conference call ended and Drew immediately glanced over at his coworker, Oakley. They had been discussing their recent findings with each other when the emergency virtual conference was called into session.

“You think all these pending cases are due to the sabotage against us? They’re quite a few of them...” Drew said.

“Most likely...Sucks that Derek got a little too eager, and accepted several of them this morning.”

“We’ll all have to pitch in and get done as much as we can.”

Shaking his head, Drew went on to accept a few more cases and began arranging meetings with the clients. He then pulled up the database in the corner of his optics to view the compensation packages that were constantly being updated.

He made his way to a cafe where his first meeting took place. Sitting in the corner of the second floor, a skinny woman was already there waiting for him.

“Hi, I’m Drew from the Halls Corporation. We spoke just now.”

“Yes. I don’t have much time to waste. You’ll find your company’s product right here.” She pointed to the bag on the table before them.

“Yes, thank you. Allow me a moment to verify it.”

Without needing to consciously direct his actions, Drew went over the motions of verifying the cybernetic to be a product of his company. He then went over the receipts and when everything checked out fine, he put on his best apologetic smile. He has had a lot of practice recently, so he was quite confident about it.

“Thank you for your patience. I am so sorry to hear how our product failed you in your time of need. Full disclosure, we believe our products are being actively sabotaged right now, and we will resolve it soon, so please do consider our products in the future as well. For now, we are more than willing to compensate you for your troubles. Here are the options we have.” Drew bowed as he sent over the file that had several options for the customers to choose from.

There were flat monetary compensations, product replacements, coupon credits toward future purchases, or a mix of the selections. It was a given that monetary compensation had the least value among the options, given that the company tried to encourage the customer to do business with them again.

The monetary compensation alone has become double the purchase price...The company really wants to keep its reputation with the customers.

Drew’s first meeting ended smoothly, and the customer left satisfied, so he was glad he didn’t have to handle a difficult client first thing in the morning.

Just as he was getting back to his car, a blaring alarm rang out in his head. The source was his company’s software.

“Alert, a fellow employee has been detected in your vicinity engaging in suspicious activity. Please move to capture or eliminate them if they prove to be a threat.”

“...Huh?”