PRIVATE Larceny By Trick

[Lizaveta Isakova]

Lizaveta stood on the sidewalk, watching impassively and smoking a cigarette as she watched the cars drive hither and thither on the streets of Night City. She was waiting for her second contact, and for Delamain.

There was much on the woman's mind, not least of which the gig she was about to run. The game was fairly simple; she was attending a party at the North Oaks home of a corpo big-wig. The guest of honor was a young man from the United Kingdom, well-known on in cyberware research and design circles, by the name of @Henry Thorncroft. He was rumored to have some kind of new prototype design schematic that he was shopping around, and the aforementioned, North Oaks-home owning big-wig was hoping to get a slice of the action as a finder's fee for introducing the British gentleman to the right people in Night City. Prostitution by any other name, but without the fun of a horizontal tango.

She turned to see @Jocelyn Tashiro fidgeting the neckline of her dress. Well, not her dress; technically it belonged to Lizaveta, but it was on loan to the girl for the gig. Jocelyn didn't have the resources for a designer evening dress, but then again Lizaveta didn't have the knowledge or skills to hack a computer system, so it seemed a fair trade. Jocelyn had to look like the kind of person who would be at such a party, and her identity had been crafted to reflect that. For tonight, Jocelyn was Olivia Sinclair -- Livy, to friends -- who was part of a component of Petrochem's microcircuitry division. In reality, she was the netrunning hacker for the gig. She would get in and out of Thorncroft's files -- ideally without being spotted -- and snag a copy of the file. It was probably encrypted beyond her means to decrypt it, but that was for Lizaveta to handle.

The third leg of the stool was @Catriona Devine. This young woman had come to her attention by way of one of her contacts within Arasaka: @Nikolai Drexler. When she had learned that Thornton had a preference for a certain type of woman -- natural beauty, unmarred by a lot of cyberware -- it had been a no-brainer.

The sex worker was scheduled to arrive soon, then they could go over the plan before separating and arriving to the party separately.

 

[Catriona Devine]

"So ye pished oan him."

"Mhm, I did."

"An' he paid ye to pish oan him."

"He did, yes."

"Did ye still hae to shag him?"

Catriona paused momentarily, her fingers requiring every inch of cerebral focus to secure the necklace clasp beneath her chin. In hindsight, perhaps they should have stolen a statement jewellery piece that had magnetic fastening, rather than such fiddly, delicate nonsense. Then again, she was a sucker for the look of it. A chunky cascade of geometric shapes cast in bronze, very Art Deco. How could she resist?

"No, he had that part all in hand," she finally answered after conquering her foe and pulling it around so it wasn't backwards, "if you get my drift."

"Christ on a bike, startin' tae hink ahm in the wrang line o'work."

"Do you want to pee on strange men for eddies?" Devine asked as she opened the van's passenger door and made her escape from the interior of Moira. She lingered, navy heels on the ground and one hand on the door as Sock appeared to quite vividly imagine himself in the shoes of a fetish-satisfying escort for a few lingering seconds. His eyes bulged, signifying that the fantasy might not have been his cup of tea.

"Can ah pee oan strange quines instead?"

She tilted her head and offered her incomprehensible friend a mischievous grin. "It's Night City; you can pee where you like." Feeling like that was a snappy line, the woman closed the door and walked away.

In all of her infinite wisdom, she had decided not to get dropped off directly at the meeting point in a graffiti-laden van driven by a scraggly Scottish man in a bucket hat but instead around the corner, especially given the contrast of elegance that she was serving. The dress (also stolen) was a navy bodycon moment, made to highlight curves without being egregiously slutty. Sleeveless but not strapless, her cleavage was respectable, with the singular morsel of fun coming from the single thigh split in the dress and finished off with a cream suit jacket.

Donning the glad rags should have felt like home, far removed from seedy motels in the wrong part of town that had become the new normal. Yet, something was alien in it, as if she had lost that part of her firmly destined for the unremarkable middle class.

Still, her life was all about pretending.

Her contact was waiting on the sidewalk, just a couple of gals on the night out, at least on the surface. In truth, Catriona didn't have much of a clue what the nature of the job was, only that she'd been hired and that, in escort terms, that was often enough. She felt safe assuming it didn't involve watersports (at least she hoped, the tarp in her other stolen jacket).

"Good evening, ladies," Devine announced on the approach, equipped with her best placid customer service smile, "I hope you've not been waiting long."

 

[Lizaveta Isakova]

The woman who approached didn't look like a prostitute, and while she had been prepared for that -- to an extent -- she was actually surprised at how little she looked like a prostitute. She wore a designer dress like she had been born to do it. Better than Lizaveta herself, who had been born reasonably poor. Her eyebrows lifted and she nodded. Yes, she would do quite nicely, Lizka thought.

"Good evening," said Lizaveta when the woman came within range and greeted them. Jocelyn offered a shy hello. "Not at all. You're right on time. Catriona, right?" Lizka's voice was gently accented, belying her native Russian tongue. "I'm Lizaveta Isakova. This is Jocelyn." She gestured vaguely toward the girl to her right.

With all the introductions thus out of the way, Lizaveta huddled with the women. "The gig is fairly simple, but -- devil is in details, I think the phrase is?" She dug into her handbag and drew a silver cigarette case. After offering smokes to the other women, Lizaveta took one and placed it betwixt her pink lips, then lit up. "You've got your cover stories, yes? We're all on the list to attend a party at Jeff Winkler's home in North Oaks. The guest of honor is Henry Thorncroft, some kind of cyberware wunderkind shopping what Winkler has been billing as a revolutionary new microcircuit design."

Lizaveta paused to take another drag of the cigarette, then blew out tendrils of silvery smoke. "That's all well and good, but if he sells it to one of the megacorps -- Arasaka, Millitech, whoever -- it's going to be out of our reach. Jocelyn is going to hack the system and snag it. Catriona, your role will be to keep Mr. Thorncroft occupied. Obviously, there is no requirement to..." She gestured with her cigarette hand toward the woman. "...you know. Don't let me tell you your business, but to be clear, it's not an expectation as part of the gig."

Awkward.

"Questions?"

@Catriona Devine | @Jocelyn Tashiro​

 

[Catriona Devine]

Forget about the internal self-identity crisis; what a refreshing change of pace it was to speak to civilised people.

Catriona appreciated the crew more than she would care to admit to their faces, but they were hardly the sort to take home for Christmas. Tripz was an anti-social gremlin who existed on a diet of fast food and faster drugs, PCS was always one snide comment away from blowing a fuse and putting a hole in the wall, and Sock was Scottish and thus unintelligible to polite society.

She hummed in the affirmative, still holding that same smile reserved for business rather than pleasure, as she took the offered cigarette and lit it.

The cover story was its own little amusement, a lie on top of a lie. A middle-class unfortunate on hard times cosplaying as a Northside joytoy pretending to be the person she had once desired to be, and also, Dutch (why learn a language if you weren't going to use it). Lieke ten Cate, assistant to private gallery curator Ruud Vliermans, an eclectic recluse who never set foot out of his Eindhoven abode, and coincidentally wholly made up, Benelux bullshit. In concocting the identity, Catriona found it was best to speak to what she knew. Art. Obscure was good. It was a world where people feared not being in the loop, where people were willing to swear themselves into fiction to avoid being seen as clueless.

Foolproof, she had thought, in infinite arrogance.

Nodding along to the devil and his details, Devine wasn't so much invested in the technical aspects; it was corpo rat-eat-rat stuff—industrial sabotage, so far above her pay grade that she refused to take it on. Her role was ancillary, involving more simple matters that may or may not have involved fucking. Dealer's choice, apparently.

"Good to know," she finally commented through a thoroughly entertained half-laugh, flicking a head of ash onto the sidewalk before folding her arms, the cigarette butt being held ponderously close to her lips (bronze gloss, if you must). "You won't hear me complaining; it seems simple enough on my end." Not so long ago, like last month, she might have baulked at the thought of occupying some techcretin with the power of sexuality, but... using a guy as a toilet for eddies changes a person.

Devine took a long draw, blowing streams of smoke from her nostrils as harrowing imagery from the last client lingered in her brain.

"Do you have a profile for Mr. Thorncraft? I don't expect the down-and-dirty details, but anything you might have would be helpful. Likes, dislikes, quirks, if you get my drift."

 

[Lizaveta Isakova]

Lizaveta inclined her head, a movement that accentuated the swanlike grace of her neck, and she rolled her head this way and that, working out some tension there. "The information I have is not terribly in depth," she said apologetically. "Thorncroft is -- if you'll pardon the expression -- a geek. English. Highly intelligent. Although he is apparently a brilliant cyberware designers, the information I have is that he prefers women who are less... technologically developed. Hence -- you."

Another drag from her cigarette, another controlled exhalation, and she drew her phone from her handbag. "Flicking you the full details." And the word was as good as deed, for the full dossier soon materialized on Catriona's device. "Not much else is publicly known."

If Lizaveta had known about Catriona's background in art history, a new angle of attack would have been apparent there: Thorncroft's public investment portfolio showed a pattern of amateurish, uncoordinated purchases of European art -- an old master or two, some mid-19th century pieces, and three Klimts -- suggesting that he either had no eye for art and was just purchasing it for its supposed value, or was trying and not especially skilled. Perhaps Catriona would pick up on that.

"And he's allergic to cranberry," Lizaveta concluded. She spread her hands as if to say what else do you want from me?

@Catriona Devine​