Bad Day

It december 21st of 2079, and Marc Cole was having a bad morning.
Marc was picking up his usual breakfast on the way to work, when he heard the sound of twisted plastic and shattering glass. By the time he could come outside to investigate the commotion, the back wheel of his beloved Jackrabbit was crumpled at an odd angle and the guilty vehicle, a blue van, had already pulled out into the flow of traffic. None of the amused spectators got a good look at the license-plate and the staff back inside the establishment were of little help, and so Marc was left with little choice but to call roadside-assistance to tow what's left of his car while he figured out how he was going to finish his commute on foot. Couldn't be that hard, could it?
By the time Marc made it to his workplace at Quva Home-Automation's offices, he was twenty minutes late, twelve nuyen down and his breakfast-burrito was tepid mush. The familiar building looked much taller, now that he knew he was in for as soon as he clocked in.
"Marc?" A familiar, nasally voice called out from behind and below him, pushing him to realise he had been standing still for a whole minute in embittered silence.
"Douglas." Marc responded flatly, hoping that simply pronouncing the second syllable of Doug's name would tell his co-worker all they needed to know about his morning.
"So you're late as well?" Doug's tone remained gratingly chipper as ever, despite the uncertainty of his future employment, an ongoing habit Marc knew well enough to theorise the bespectacled dwarf must be on some kind of moodsoft. "Stick with me, we'll get in less trouble if we back each other up. Traffic get you too?"
"You could say that..." Marc responded half-heartedly, as he followed Doug into the underground parking-lot and back to his own car, pretending he couldn't see his empty parking-space as they walked past. "Some jagoff backed his van into my car, and I tried taking the metro." He said, head hanging back in resigned frustration.
"Ouch!" Doug hissed, cringing in shared pain. "Lucky you made it hear at all. Didja get the plates?"
"Afraid not, guy managed to merge into traffic before I could give him a piece of my mind." Marc emphasized the word 'piece' by slapping a fist into an open palm, as if he was a legitimate threat and not a dumpy human in business-casual watching his co-worker rummage around in a car full of fast-food wrappers.
"The nerve of some people... Hey, mind carrying this for me?" Doug didn't even waiit for an answer as he handed Marc a cylindrical metal container, heavy enough to leave him stumbling a couple of steps to the right, while Doug himself grabbed two more identical containers himself and kicked the car-door shut behind him. "Thanks pal. Old Irons has me taking some of my work home with me, and I swear to god I nearly turned back because I lost one of these..." He hoisted up one of the faux-leather clad boxes, its reinforced locks shining under the harsh lights of the basement-lot. "Under a pile of McHughs baggies. The struggle, eh?"
"I swear, someday you're gonna fall into the back-seats, and it'll take the marines to find you living on the eight or nine months of bag-fries still in there." Marc joked, sharing a tired giggle with Doug as the two made their way back to the front doors. Maybe today wasn't gonna be so bad after all...
"Mr. Cole."
The very moment Marc left the cold and entered the sterile climate-controlled interior of his workplace, another familiar, but far less friendly voice greeted him.
"Mr. Duffy! Sorry we're late, traff--"
"I wasn't talking to you." Marc's supervisor interrupted Doug with a tone as icy and indifferent to his humanity as the security-drones patrolling the interior wallways, perfectly suited for its gaunt, pale owner, who stared daggers at Marc through a pair of prosthetic eyes that couldn't have tried less to appear warm and alive, refusing to so much as acknowledge Doug's existence.
"Mr. Cole, you've missed the morning meeting." Mr. Duffy dismissed his subordinate with a half-hearted flick of his fingers. "I'll speak to you later about it, just punch in already..." Marc could only glance at Doug and meet his sympathetic gaze while he shrugged, helpless to defend Marc or even give an explanation as to why he was the only one Mr. Duffy had confronted, which certainly beat the way every other employee was pretending not to notice the public dressing-down being given.
"We'll uh, catch you later Mr. Duffy, sorry for... yeah." Doug irresolutely called back as he ushered himself and Marc away from the supervisor's aura of elfy scorn, until he was just a condescending spec at the other end of a long corridor.
The walk up to the offices was awkwardly silent. Marc was more than forgiving towards Doug after he tried apologising for his inability to help with Mr. Duffy's wrath - after all, Doug couldn't have known that life had it in for Marc that morning. He handed over the third suitcase to Doug as they parted ways to their specific workstations - Marc in finances and Doug in R&D a few more floors up - and made his way to his cubice, resigning himself to simply get on with his workload and try not to stick out any more than he had that morning.
Marc's 'cubicle', if you could even call it that, was emblemetic of Quva's office culture: Merely a short desk and backless seat , seperated from the ones around it only by stubby walls of semitransparent plastic, all facing away from long corridors and conference tables. The powers-that-be described this arrangement as being an 'open layout' to give the impression of each workspace being roomier that it is, but all it meant in practice was that Marc and every other poor slot assigned to these desks would never be able to shake off the feeling of being watched, be it from eachother or the various service-drones pitter-pattering their way down the corridors.
Marc sat down at his desk after an exchange of mumbled, half-hearted greetings with his co-workers, and wasted no time in grabbing the sole occupant of the deskspace; a long, flexible cable topped off with a gold-plated jack, and jabbing it in the rough direction of a corresponding port implanted in the back of his neck until it hit home, and confirmed such with the sudden emergence of dozens of virtual workstation interfaces. Marc took silent solace in his new cyberware allowing him to truly work 'hands-free' as he took a tentative bite of his burrito, now stone-cold, and began earning his day's wages.
The morning continued following the precedence already set by the state of his Jackrabbit, which to Marc's dismay, wouldn't be covered by insurance without the identity of the unknown assailant that crushed its back wheel. Marc's work was beset with constant interruptions, from further reprimand by Mr. Duffy for his late arrival, to sudden changes in schedule outlined in the morning-meeting he missed, to reprimand for his workflow being interrupted by prior reprimand. By the time his lunch-break rolled along, Marc was quietly praying for a silver-lining in all of this...
And he got one.
Marc once again found himself walking through the company parking-lot, following his ever-spirited lunch-break companion Doug out back to his car to pick up yet another piece of 'homework' from his car, this time to search through a mountain of trash to find a plastic fob chip that was somehow important enough to necessitate a two-person job looking for it. It was the least Marc could to really, considering Doug was happy to lend an ear to Marc's own woes as they made their way back to Doug's scratched sedan.
"Sucks that Duffy's picked you to be his whipping-boy." Doug said amidst his cave of refuse. "Any luck on getting the insurance thing done?"
"Nada." Marc answered, his sour expression exacerbated from the stench of old ketchup and mustard stained wrappings he was elbow-deep in. "No license plate or ID, damages are all on me. If I ever find the moron who drove that van... Found it."
"Score!" Doug leaps out from the back seats in a stale explosion of litter, grinning ear to ear. "I owe you big for this Marc, couldn't get anything done without the arfid in that little thing. lemme treat you to lunch!" he offered, plucking a discarded ketchup-sachet off of Marc's back as he emerged back out of the car, fob in hand.
"Thanks, but I'll pass. Still full on lunch, y'know?" Marc answered, in a slightly more blunt tone than intended, as he passed the innocuous looking device over to his co-worker. He scowled as he noticed how many crumbs and flecks of old sauce he had accumulated on his clothes.
"Fair, but the offer's still--... y'know..." Doug's reasurrance trailed off as his focus averted from the RFID fob in his hand to something in Marc's direction. "Hey, question."
"Shoot." Marc replied, inspecting himself for any more refuse that might've taken passenger on his clothes.
"That van that totalled your car... Was it by any chance a blue one?"
Marc shot a glance at Doug, before realising what he was hinting at and began to turn around at a pace suited to someone ready for dissapointment. To everyone's surprise, especially Marc himself, right at the end of the parking lot was a pastel blue van, the side facing Marc addorned with a long streak of scratches and dents.
And it was parked in his spot.
To Doug's surprise, Marc appeared calm about the situation. He took a moment to stretch his arms, and every iota of tension seemed to simply ooze out of his body in one slow exhalation, before he began to walk. Not towards the van, as Doug expected him to (possibly with some blunt, heavy object), but instead he marched right past and back through the front doors of Quva's offices, unfazed by the disdainful glare of a passing Mr. Duffy and intent on finding out who had arrived to the building in the van that was the source of all his problems, only a faint crack in his tone of voice interrogating the secretary betraying the inferno building within.
"Er, Marc? Marcy-boy?" Doug asked in an uncharacteristically cautious tone of voice as he followed the confident stranger he tentatively recognised as Marc into the elevator.
"Can't believe my luck..." Marc shook his head as he spoke in a tone all too soft for the situation. "They totalled my car, now they're in this very building installing trid projectors. In your workspace, too!"
"Marc, just uh... Look, we've got the number on their plates, let's just ask them about the car and if it's the guys..." Doug reached up and patted Marc's shoulder in a quietly desperate attempt to keep him in check. "Let's just leave it and call the insurance company, right? Let's not make this... y'know, apocalyptic. Y'know? Buddy?"
Marc left the elevator before the doors fully opened, Doug following as best as he can despite the difference in respective leg-length making keeping up with the enflamed desk-jockey a challenge of its own, restrained only by the knowledge that straying too far from Doug and his access-credentials would mean getting tased by the floor's ever-vigilant security drones. Drones that Doug had noticed, were strangely absent this lunchbreak.
"Marc, wait!" Doug grabbed at Marc's wrist right as they approached the large, reinforced doors leading into the depths of Quva's Research & Development facilities. A pair of bulky figures, clad in blue overalls, could be vaguely made out through the frosted glass of a nearby window, standing and kneeling around one of the room's corners.
"Just... c'mon, humor me, alright? Promise me you're not gonna start a fight or anything in there. This is my job too, y'know?" Doug pleaded, the depth of the situation audibly putting a strain on his usual sprightly attitude.
"Doug, I'm just gonna talk to 'em. I..." Marc hesitated. He had every word, every badass quip and if need be, every possible move of self-defence he might need to come out of this on top and turn a bad day into an amazing one. But seeing Doug of all people worry about him made him have second thoughts about his plan.
"I'm... Yeah. No, I promise. I'll just talk to them, I won't start a fight." Marc answered, feeling a tad self-conscious about his early swaggering. Doug however, seemed to have caught some of Marc's initial bravado, and held up his keycard with a flashy grin.
"I got your back, chummer. Ready to do this?" Doug puffed his chest, what little there was of it, as he pressed his card against the door's scanner. Marc didn't answer, and as soon as the door opened up he marched inside. He was gonna set things straight, get his insurance sorted out and go back to work, having turned a bad day into a good one before lunch was even over. After all, what's the worst a couple of jumpsuits can do in him and Doug's home-turf?
"Hey, excuuUuuse... "
Doug leaned to one side, confused and eager as to what made Marc deflate mid-sentence. Sure enough, there were three guys in jumpsuits standing around Doug's usual workstation with a box full of tools, only there's no trid-projector being installed like the secretary told them. All three of them turned around at the unexpected intrusion, revealing one of them to be holding one of the locked containers Doug had brought into work that day, and another to be holding something that didn't look like it belonged in the hands of an electrician.
"Oh." Doug whimpered, retreating back behind Marc. "Oooh drek, they're not..."
"Not what...? Doug?" Marc whispered back, as if doing so would make what he's saying any less apparent to the strangers who Marc was now fairly certain were not electricians. One of them, a tall elf wearing a knitted hat, took a step towards the two, giving them ample time to notice that their faces had a distinctly matte sheen to them.
"So you're Doug, are ya?" The elf spoke in a quiet but friendly tone, mouth curled into a lopsided grin, not at all the tone Marc was expecting from someone caught red-handed doing... something. "Is this yours?" He asked, gesturing back to the metal-reinforced containers. Doug could only offer a a silent nod in response, seemingly wanting to dissapear into his own shadow as the three not-electricians focussed their attention on him.
Marc swallowed a great mouthful of nothing as he looked across the three strangers he was about to shout down for what they did to his car, coming to realise why he hadn't seen any security-drones on his way through the floor. He'd read about these sort of people on the newscasts, but struggled with the reality of such people standing infront of him. After all, Shadowrunners are just bad guys in trids, aren't they? I mean they're real, but there couldn't be three of them in his workplace. That sort of thing happens to other people...
As if reading his mind, a second one stood stood out, leaving the third and final one to focus on Doug's workstation. This one was an Ork, and judging by the jumpsuit's valiant but unenviable struggle at containing their bulk, they were the muscle of this group. Without breaking eye-contract with Marc, the Ork walked a leisurely but deceptively fast circle around him towards the door, palming it shut without any sense of urgency but a palpably threatening aura, and remaining interposed between it and the two interloping employees.
"Doug..." The elf stood infront of Doug, and with a great creaking of joints squatted down until their eyes were level. "I don't s'pose you could show us how to crack these open, couldja? We kind of need something from 'em."
Doug didn't so much respond as he did mumble through half a dozen syllables in search of one that might lead him to the right thing to say. Eventually, he settled on... "I uh, can't let you."
Marc gritted his teeth as he let his shoulders drop, baffled at Doug's choice of words.
"Why's that?" The elf asked as he shot an amused glance at Marc, which gave him the vague impression that they were just as confused as he was.
"Well, I mean y'know it's... It's company property, see? Can't just let visitors look at everything without uh.." Doug let out a nervous chuckle. "I'd have to get you clearance, y'know? If you'd let me call security, I'm sure they'd..." his words tumbled into formless gibberish as his mention of security piqued the interest of the third stranger, a gaunt human, who stopped his ambiguous tinkering with one of the canisters to shoot Doug the icest of glares from across his shoulder.
"We're in kind of a hurry. You know how it is..." The elf shrugged, carrying on with the tone of asking for a casual favor. Marc looked over his shoulder again, only to be silently dissuaded from doing so by the Ork guarding the door, who despite their bulk had managed to silently cross back over the room until she was standing right behind the two co-workers.
Doug remained quiet. Marc held his breath, praying that Doug would just get the hint and tell them how to get into the damn containers so they could leave the building with all their organs intact...
"See, I shouldn't even be in here. Only reason I came was..." Doug pointed a thumb up at Marc. "This guy here wanted to say something to you."
"Motherf--." Marc hissed at Doug, before he realised the attention was now on him. "No, guys it... It's, i-it's not like that, I'm just..."
The human in the back set the container he was fidgeting with back down onto the work-surface with an audible metalic clank, and Marc could see that an electronic port in the top end was opened and wired up to... something, nestled in a heavy canvas satchel on the human's back, which was in turn connected by a cable to the back of their head. Just what the hell is Doug working on?
"What I mean is... Screw it." Marc clenched his fists but remained in place. "Did either of you guys hit a Nissan Jackrabbit this morning? Apple-green, Burro-Barn parking-lot?"
"What in the..." The Elf stood back up at full height, appearing legitimately caught off-guard from the sudden turn of conversation. But before he could fathom a response a dry, grating repetition of snorts was heard behind Marc. The Ork who just a second ago looked ready to pull Marc to pieces was hunched over, and they were laughing.
"Drekking shit.." The ork exlaimed in a shockingly feminine voice. "That was your ride I busted up? And now you're... Ohoh, man! Small fuckin' world, eh Null?" She gestured towards the human, who responded only with a roll of the eyes as he turned back away from the developing scene.
"Yeah, that was my ride!" Marc said, face burning a bright crimson. "You totalled it, which made me late, which screwed up my whole day! I've gotta pay over a thousand bucks to get it fixed too!" By this point, Marc had spun around and stood face-to-face with the Ork, who looked nervously over her shoulder before giving Marc a forceful shove with the palm of her hand.
"Alright, alright, inside-voices, chummer." Her tone was opposite of Marc's building rage, dismissive and sing-songy. "We're just here for the, the uh... those fuckers. One of 'em has a certain something we're looking for." She gestured again to the human, who simply ignored the Ork's taunt as he quietly focussed on the locked containers. "So if y'can't help us, why don't you just take a seat and stay outa the way, eh chummer?"
Marc fumed. He wanted to throw a punch at the smug ork, but even amidst his mind fogging with rage and embarassment, he still knew exactly how that would go down. If these guys were really what Marc was now certain they were, the reasonable voice in his head told him, then it would be best to just take his lumps, let them do what they want and hope he can still keep his job when they walk out with whatever's in those containers.
Fuck that, said another, louder voice in his head. Headbutt the pricks.
"I'll open it." Marc said, turning on the spot to face the other two intruders and away from the hulking Ork whose face would forever be categorised in Marc's head as the source of all evil and indignity. "I'm the project manager, I've got clearance."
"Well, that's a positive change in attitude..." The Elf sighed, whiping his brow in a melodramatic display of relief and putting his hands on his hips as he stood to one side and let Marc walk past.
"Marc. How're you gonna..." Doug peaked from behind his fingers and watched Marc approach his workstation. It was becoming increasingly hard to ignore how little patience Marc's stunt there left the three of them with, and if they knew he was jerking them around - which he most certainly was, since there's no possible way Marc could have figured a way into the locked containers, unless he figured out what the fob he spent five minutes in a car scrambling for was designed to to - they'd certainly start resorting to less savoury methods to get inside, assuming they don't just shoot the both of them and deal with the tracked container in their own time.
"Look, I'll show you how to open these things to get at what's inside, but you--... you've gotta promise me you'll let us go when we do." Marc pleaded with the three strangers as they began to crowd around him, appearing equally as curious as Doug as to what was going to happen next.
"Done deal, chummer!" The Elf clapped his hands together, rubbing the palms of his hands in anticipation. "Now like I said, we're in a bit of a hurry, so if you don't mind..." The Elf said, spinning his index-finger in that universal gesture of 'hurry the drek up'.
Now at the table, Marc took one of the heavy containers and inspecting it in detail, eventually setting it down on one end with the same end the human had tried jacking into facing up. Rummaging into the pockets of his mustard-stained slacks, Marc pulled out a loosely coiled length of frayed cable, topped with a gold-plated jack at either end, and inserted one end into the top section of the container's casing while feeling for the back of his neck with the other, just as he does every morning with his workplace's datajack.
"Everyone in R&D has the access-codes to the project hard-wired into their jack. If you open it without 'em, it'll destroy... y'know, the stuff. Just plug it in, and..." Doug could only join the others in curiously watching Marc, as he explained in a quiet, slightly quivering tone how he intended to open the container. After a few seconds of silence, Marc nodded to nobody in particular and removed his datajack from the container, which appeared unchanged. "There, it's unlocked." he spoke with a confidence that by all rights he should't have or deserve.
"It... doesn't look unlocked." The human remarked, dragging the container along the workstation towards himself and giving what looked like the top an inquisitive twist, which sure enough, didn't budge.
"What? No, that can't..." Marc took the container with both hands and made an attempt at twisting the upper section of the casing off in the same way, to similarly fruitless results. "Son of a--... Hold on, it's-... it's gotta be stuck."
Marc took a step back from the workstation and readjusted his grip, making another attempt at unscrewing what everyone was now looking at as the 'lid' of the container. Everyone escept Doug of course, who could only stare on confused horror as Marc twisted and grasped a piece of casing on the complete opposite end of where it's supposed to unfold open.
"Doug, little help?" Marc quipped, pointing a finger at the dwarf in the corner, who visibly flinched as three sets of glaring eyes set down on him at him.
With everyone's attention firmly on Doug, Marc sprung into action. With a sudden burst of movement that nobody saw coming, not even Marc himself, he suddenly spun around on the spot with the arm holding onto the container outstretched. With a ringing metallic clonk, the container's reinforced casing collided with the side of the Elf's face, carrying on as he crumpled out of its way into the back of the Ork's head. Once he had her floored, he could--

The next thing Marc knew, he found himself sitting on the back steps of an ambulance.
A blanket of thin, silvery material was draped over his shoulders, the parts of his face that weren't numb were throbbing in pain and had some kind of wet covering on top, and in his hand was a can of carbonated juice he had no memory of asking for, not that he could remember much else at that moment. Doug had one too, and was standing next to him, seemingly no worse for wear save for a dressing over his nose and watching the peanut-gallery of corpsec and journalists gathering in and around the building.
"Douglas." Marc murmered through the haze of what seemed like at least a few minutes of being completely out of it. As soon as Marc's words reached Doug, he briskly turned on the spot to face his co-worker.
"Marc, you're not braindead!" Doug planted a clammy hand on Marc's shoulder, grinning ear to ear. "You feelin' any better, bud?" His voice was even more nasal than usual, almost to the point of making it hard to understand what he was happily saying.
"Can't remember drek... What happened after I hit that Ork with the..." Marc pantomimed holding one of the containers from before as he grumbled through his question.
"Exactly what you think would happen." Doug chuckled, taking another sip of his beverage. "Bounced off her head and she didn't budge, then the skinny one punched you down to the ground. Then they injected you with... "
"With...?" Marc urged, gently testing the surface of his face with his spare hand. Some sort of dressing was over the side of his face, and upon further investigation the shoulder beneath it was damp with blood. How could someone so scrawny hit him hard enough to do that?
"I... dunno, but don't worry about it. Doc says it just put you out for a bit, it'll flush out." Doug replied, flicking an intravenous bag hanging from the door of the ambulance and hooked up to Marc's wrist. "Anyway, those guys in the jumpsuits just stuffed the cans into a duffel-bag and went to split, but security heard the ruckus you made and were right outside the door. Things... escalated." He gestured at the front of the building, specifically to the cracks along the upper-floor windows, spread like spider-webs through the reinforced glass.
"Ah, sh-... Anybody get, y'know...?" Marc extended his index finger and thumb and mimed the action of a gun.
"What? Nah... Well-- No, no..." Doug shook his hands. "Some shots were fired, but it was those zapper bullets. K.O'd security and then they got outa dodge. Looks like you did worse to 'em than what they did to us." He chuckled half-heartedly, but Marc's focus remained on the building. Mr. Duffy was huddled just outside the entrance, looking more terrified than Marc had ever seen him, as he gave his statement to a Lone Star officer. Silver linings, Marc mused internally...
"Just what were you thinking, anyways?" Doug confronted the proverbial elephant in the room. "Why'd you take a swing, at the big one of all people?" Marc shrugged in response.
"First of all, I just lost my temper, fucking 'inside voices'..." Marc growled through a momentary scowl. "Second... shoot, figured if today was gonna take a dump on me, I might as well go out swinging, y'know?" His tone took a slightly somber turn, as he replayed the events in his head and took count of how many times he could have - should have - gotten killed there. Six, by his reckoning.
"How about you?" Marc then asked, waving his hand across his own face. "Did they uh..."
"Oh, this?" Doug pointed a stubby finger at his nose, covered in dressings, with an embarassed grin. "I uh... Well, once the medics carried you out, I wanted to keep an eye on you while you were... Anyways, I fell down the stairs, broke my nose." The two of them erupted into more laughter, more genuine than before.
"Ah, and I'll tell you somethin' else too." Doug said, walking infront of Marc and sitting down next to him. "Your pal Doug told everyone that you took a swing at some Shadowrunners. Shadowrunners!"
"Why's that?" Marc grumbled. Looking up, he couldn't help but notice that some of his co-workers - Mr. Duffy included - were frequently shooting glances in his direction.
"So everyone would think you're a badass, duh." Doug answered, in the same chipper tone he greeted Marc with that morning. Marc made a note to buy the man lunch for the next five years, assuming he kept his job.
"What about the... the uh..." Marc scratched his head, flinching at the tender spots he accidentally grazed, before making another half-hearted pantomime of the cylindrical containers he somehow bludgeoned an Elf with.
"The canisters? No dice..." Doug took a moment to finish his drink, eyes fixed on the cracked windows above. "Tracking-signal died as soon as they left the room, cops reckon they had something in the bags to hush the arfids in the case. Still, good luck on getting them open without magnetising what's inside, jagoffs!" Another wheezing chuckle from the two, followed by a moment of silence amidst the ruckus happening around them.
"... Say, Doug." Marc broke the silence. "How do you get inside those things?"
"Well you tell me, you've got the codes in your 'jack apparently..." Doug replied, letting Marc know he's going to be joking about this for a long, long time. He leaned to one side and fished in his pockets, eventually pulling something out and showing it to Marc: It was the plastic fob, the one Marc dived through a cave of trash looking for at the start of lunch. "The jack-port was a decoy, fooled you and the human both. Just gotta swipe one o' these across the back and it'll open up like a clam, a clam with the mother of all pearls..."
Marc took a sip of his drink and sat back in quiet contemplation. His car was still wrecked, Mr. Duffy's probably gonna remember how he was late before anything else, those ketchup-stains on his shirt are probably never gonna come out, and it's gonna be an uphill battle trying to get insurance to cover his concussion... but he did get to bludgeon a couple of shadowrunners and live to tell the tale, so he's got that going for him.
Maybe today wasn't such a bad day after all.