Kate could feel the anger rising, flushing her face, as she clenched her fists into tight balls.

"Mrs. Morris, you've got to understand why our eyes fall on you first. Your... position here at Intelletec, it's just that your particular skill set is outmoded for our industry, and when examining a breach like this, we've got to look for our weak links."

He grimaced at her, beads of sweat visible on his brow. He labored to breathe in an expensive looking, fitted, textured silk suit made for a man a quarter his age and half his weight. But as much as she hated this walking pig of a man, he wasn't wrong. Well, he was wrong, of course, about her leaking data. She did have access to hundreds of thousands of files, databases full of important personal and medical information, important consumer statistical data for a huge demographic of clients. And who hadn't sat around and thought how easy it would be to steal it the info? Wearing black market safety viewing glasses so her eye bionic wouldn't catch her in the act, and using the money for an extended "vacation" where her and Cal could disappear into the tropics. But it was fantasy, she wouldn't ever actually steal client info, and if she did, what would she do with it? It's not like you could call the Defenders of Knowledge or the Southern Nationalist groups and say, "Hey, hello, here's a bunch of sensitive information, give me money, thanks!" Practicality over loyalty won every time.

"Well frankly Mr. Jermyn, this is bullshit. You know it, I know it. So do what you need to do so I can get back to work, please."

Kate crossed her arms and sat, enjoying the show as Jermyn's mouth struggled and his face flushed.

"Now, Mrs. Morris, you can't - there's no need for that kind of upstart in my office. We both know it isn't going to be that easy. I've had everyone else in the office upload their visual input history for the last six months, and it's being processed for suspicious behaviors. But you can't do that can you? No. We're going to have to send you up to legal so you can sign some confidentiality paperwork and upload your files in person." He spit the last word like it was a hair in his mouth. "It's a hassle, but I'm sure we'll get through it to find the real culprit of this leak."

His eyes narrowed at her, solidifying the piggy image.

"Fine. Check my eyeball cams, you're not going to find anything. Also, I'm letting you know now that I'm going to HR. I'm one of four people in this whole building that doesn't have a memory augmentation, I earned my degree with six years of actual, in person study, learning things on my own. I didn't get to take a nap and wake up with the combined expertise of half a dozen old assholes. Let's see what HR has to say about this traumatically discriminatory conversation. Dick."

Kate stormed through the door, slamming it behind her as half a dozen cubicle heads snapped up from their desks to stare. She's probably get in trouble for "language" later, but right now she didn't care. There was no reason to suspect her, she'd worked at Intelletec for six years, her husband was a top level memory editor, and frankly everyone knew she wasn't going to make money like this anywhere else without an augmented memory degree. He was singling her out, most of the lower management in her department did. She jabbed the elevators up button, and glared around the cubicles. The few remaining people looking at her immediately found themselves very busy with something. She exhaled a long, slow breath. If they wanted to sift through her work memories, there wasn't much she could do to stop them. Intelletec had excellent benefits, good insurance, a 401k, but one of the biggest perks to working there was that each employee received, included free in their hiring package, an artificial retina. It seemed like an amazing deal, and there were several large tech companies that offered them. While the upfront cost was pretty substantial, it meant whole buildings could remove most, if not all, computers, tablets, and the insurance cost that goes along with spending a great deal of time at them. Information could be sent instantly to employee's in-network HUD, so there was no more excuse of "I never received your memo, sorry I missed the meeting" because all memos, company emails, and even live streamed meetings could be instantly sent to the display. The dark side, that many a new hire never felt until their first disciplinary meeting, is that the company literally owned one of your eyes. There was no gruesome loss upon termination, and they said no one was monitored once they clocked out (though a few unscrupulous security guards had been fired after caught with some unsavory POV clips no one could quite explain) but it did mean micromanaging and productivity push were at an all time high.

Kate stood in an uncomfortably, waiting for the elevator to descend. She didn't have a memory augment, which meant they could not wireless connect her and her memories to the network and upload them to the cloud. No, she was going to have to tromp up to HR, sit down with one of the company's lawyer witnesses so she couldn't claim abuse of memory later, and spend the rest of her afternoon staring at a wall so they could upload her visual feed from the last six months. Frustrated, she raised her hands in front of her face and focused on her two extended middle fingers. It was a small gesture, but one she felt good about. She focused on them for a long time, looking back and forth between them to make sure the full effect had been reached. Suddenly a small cough startled her out of focus, she looked up into the faces of half a dozen employees waiting to pass her through the opened elevator doors. Her satisfied smile dropped.

"Ah, excuse me, just checking my nails."

She felt her face burning as she jammed her hands into her dress pockets and walked, head down, into the elevator. Blessedly, the majority of people had been getting off on that floor, so avoiding eye contact on the short ride back up was easy. She pushed past the doors as they slowly slid open, almost running into two people getting back on. Once she was out of sight, she slowed and looked around. She was still pissed she was the main suspect in the information leak, and began to have genuinely concerning thoughts. What if they decided to scapegoat her, even without providing any kind of guilt? The company could do it, and likely would if it meant covering up the messy and rather public loss of thousands of customers' private information and memories. She could feel the worry gnawing at her gut as she opened the door to Benny's office.

Benjamin Davis was large, both in personality and physical size. His office was a haven of old time luxury in the poppy and colorful corporate wasteland. It smelled of old wood and books, two dark leather couches, a large leather topped mahogany desk, and a vintage spinning leather office chair - Kate wasn't sure if he loved the feel of leather or was leading a personal crusade against the eradication of the bovine menace. His office was always soft and dark and warm, and Kate looked for any excuse she could find to come visit the old coot. In reality, he was probably only ten or fifteen years older than she, but he had drawn a poor hand in the genetic lottery, and wore his age like a heavy coat.

"Hi Ben," she sighed as she flopped down on the overstuffed sofa. She sunk into it deeply, legs swinging freely over the high arm.

"Oh Jesus, what'd you do now Kate?"

Ben swiveled to face her in his chair, a scowl on his lips but laughter playing in his eyes.

"I didn't do anything, Jeremy Jermyn is just a dick."

The laughter broke free as his mouth widened and he threw his head back into a loud, gut laugh.

"Well I can't believe you didn't do anything, but I can't disagree with you there. So what can I help you with?"

His eyebrows raised, knowing a favor was about to be solicited.

"I don't actually need anything. The trial has been called and I'm to be found guilty and hung for selling secret memories to black market neo-nazis."

"What?"

"No, not really. But Jermyn is on a fucking witch hunt and apparently not having someone else's memories controlling mine makes me the witch. So he wants you to be present while HR scans my visual input for the last six months to make sure I didn't steal anything, or so he can edit some weird POV for his personal spank bank, could be either."

Ben laughed again and drew his tablet from the desk.

"Well, shit. Kate, I thought you needed something important, the way you slammed my door on the way in. Who cares if Jermyn wants your input feeds, at least it'll keep him busy for a while - going through six months of 40 hour work weeks takes time and good old fashioned manual labor. Plus we can start a pool on when he gives up, I need to make up the cash I lost for Lindsay's baby pool."

"Haha, I told you, it was her first kid, she was going to go over, and have you seen her boyfriend? He's thin now, but he used to be fat - there was no way that baby was going to be under ten pounds."

"Well, either way, at least it'll keep him busy and off your ass for a few weeks. When did he say he wanted the files?"

"Immediately, I was supposed to march up here instantly so you could start downloading."

"What a fucking dick. Does he not understand I am the head of the legal department? That I have other things to do, things that actually matter, besides unbunch his panties? I don't have time today to sit with you today to make sure one of the old bags from HR doesn't steal something from your brain. Downloading the last six months is going to take all afternoon and I've got a meeting in like twenty minutes."

"Well, he didn't specifically say you had to do it, just that someone from legal had to be there. I just didn't want to talk to anyone else up here. All of yous are kind of uptight."

Ben chuckled again as he started scrolling his tablet.

"Watch it, I've saved your ass more times than you'd like to remember."

"Like you'd ever let me forget?"

"Alright, well I have no time today, and frankly nothing the rest of the week either. Looking over everyone's schedules, the only person free today to go over the consent forms and sit with HR as a witness is our new girl, Wren."

"Wren?"

Kate groaned.

"She's a fucking idiot."

"No she's not. She's really nice once you get to know her, she's just adjusting to the corporate culture."

"Adjusting? I stood behind her for ten minutes last week, trying to order a coffee downstairs. The kid at the counter had to walk her through every step. She finally got her order, after half the line was ready to kick her ass, took two sips and dumped the whole thing in the fucking trash. She is deficient."

Ben sighed, "Well, she's the only person we've got available today, unless you want me to call down and tell Jeremy you've got to wait until next week?"

"Ugh, no. Fine. Just tell her she isn't allowed to talk to me during the download, for, I don't know, legal reasons or something. I don't want to have to listen to her drone on about north bumblefuck or wherever the hell she's from for three hours."

"Haha, three hours? You're funny. Enjoy your afternoon Kate, I've got to get ready for my meeting. Her office is down at the end of the hall, I'll send her a note that you're coming down."

Ben smiled broadly at her again as he stood and opened the door.

"And be nice. Nobody likes you around here anyway, maybe you can make a good impression on her. You two could be friends!"

"Literally, fuck you."

She was doubtful that he heard her, as Ben shut the door behind her, his eyes had already flicked upward and gone glassy as he logged into the HUD that would connect him into his meeting.

Kate stood outside of Ben's door for a few seconds, debating what she should do. She could go straight down to the new girl's office, or she could pop down to the fifth floor quick and see when Cal was going for lunch. As she stood debating a man got off the elevator and started walking quickly down the hall toward her. She recognized him vaguely as one of the interns that had worked with Cal on some past memory editing projects. He looked up from his feet as he drew nearer to her, and his eyes widened suddenly. His face burned a crimson red as he quickly looked back down at his feet and hurried by. Kate flashed with anger again. What the fuck was this guy's problem? She didn't know him or his name, had word already gotten around that she was the main target for the investigation? She sharply drew her breath and started down the hall after him. This punk was out of line, she had worked for Intelletec when he was still a pimply teen fuck and she wasn't about to take his shit. As she gained on him, he sped up, keeping his eyes glued to the floor and hands in his pockets. The end of the hall was coming up quick, this jackoff had either missed his turn or forgotten where he was going, but either was she was going to catch up with him. Just then the door at the end of the hall opened and a smiling blonde head poked out.

"Daveed, where have you been? I've been up here wai-"

The head cut off as it saw Kate, following very closely behind the man.

"Oh, um, ahem. It's good to see you Daveed, you're right on time for our legal appointment." The young blonde woman stepped out of the doorway and extended her hand to the man standing in front of her. The man looked up from the floor and into the young woman's face, his face looked as if he had recently suffered some severe sunburn. His brow furrowed as he looked down at her hand, back up to her face, and finally over his shoulder to Kate, who had stopped and cocked her head at the painfully awkward exchange. Finally he looked back to the blonde and his eyes widened again.

"Ah yes, thank you Wre- Ms. Mathis, may I come in? For my legal appointment?"

"Yes, of course. Right this way."

So it was the new girl Benny had been talking about. She tried very hard to look inconspicuous as she side eyed Kate, who stood baffled in the hallway, and ushered the young man through the door, closing it behind her.

"What in the actual fu-" Sudden realization hit Kate. She began to giggle.

"Oh my god, gross," she said to the empty hall, "don't they realize they've got eye implants recording everything? Idiots."

She turned and walked back to the elevator. Let the kids have their fun, they'd be facing suspension, and in his case, probably termination, shortly. The company may not be watching all the time, but they certainly browsed employee vision feeds to make sure no misconduct, like what she was certain was happening in that office, happened on company time. Plus it'd give her something to make the new girl uncomfortable with later. She pushed the button and walked into the empty elevator, hitting Cal's floor. She smiled to herself, maybe the afternoon wouldn't be a total waste after all.

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