Looseleaf's Diary - 12 / 04 / 2120

The new cyberdeck was almost better than sex. The neural connection faster, more responsive; the resolution of the cyberscape sharper and higher rez. Instead of being limited by my equipment, I was limited only by my meat brain and the physical limits of the fiber-optic trunk I was tapped into. I zoomed through the digital otherworld of ArdaNet like greased lightning, my pussy quivered at the increased reaction time.

Yet speed and power weren't everything. I had cut my teeth on methodical research. I dissected every frame of the video I had snagged from Rowenasdottir's household camera. Of it all, only a few frames were really useful. One of them was a clear shot of when the Orc woman had her arm raised, the barcode tattooed there clearly displayed.

I was smart enough not to scan it directly. Tû's embedded search programs had ramped my paranoia to levels I'd never known. In the sketchier darknets that the Goblins operated, patched into gaps in the main grid, were greymarket and blackmarket services that you couldn't find in the public Matrix. What I needed was a node, isolated from any my own accounts. A temporary digital space where someone else could scan the barcode and run the search for me, while I waited and watched.

From my relative safety in Rivendell, I watched the search run. And I watched too, the way that search triggered interest. Corporate hackers that descended on the spot in three heartbeats to see who was poking about in matters they shouldn't. By the time they got there, the node was gone. Aubert had unplugged from the public data terminal, the Goblin darknet had folded the node up and erased all evidence of it.

As Aubert made his way back to our apartment, I followed the corporate hackers. Faithful as Huan, they returned to their master's side: the corporate ziggurat of Drake Industries, out on the fringes of the known Matrix.

I didn't dare those gates. Not yet.

When Aubert returned, he had a strange, furtive look in his eyes. Like the time I thought he'd jerked off into my soykaf.

"I think somebody followed me," he said. "I could feel eyes on my back all the way here."

"It's a public data terminal, the camera is busted, and you were using a fake log-on to a temporary access node," I said. "They couldn't have followed you. Let me see the search results."

He laid the old cyberdeck on the table, and plugged it in. The tabletop shimmered into life, one big screen as we looked over the data.

"Corporate product code," I said, grimaced. "Nonstandard, but the same used to track products in a corporate database."

Aubert frowned. "They're trying to hide where it comes from, but this sequence," he tapped a part of the search results. "That's similar to the product codes used for military-grade cyberware augmentations."

I raised an eyebrow. "How do you know abou that?"

He looked embarassed. "I've...been thinking about getting you some new limbs. For your birthday."

My gaze stayed on him steadily, and he seemed to squirm beneath it.

"If you keep saying stuff like that, one of these days, I'm just going to suck your cock until it falls off," I said, flatly. He couldn't repress a grin at that, and I smiled back at him.

"Okay. So something in their miltech cyberware division. That gives me an idea of where to look," I said.

Aubert froze. "But you don't even know which company this belongs to!"

"I do now," I said. "That's why I had you do the search when and where you did. Traced their traceurs back to their home network. Whoever this Orc woman is, she's stamped as the property—or product—of Drake Industries."

Slowly, Aubert nodded. "They do deal in medtech. But...this...what could they be doing? What's her part in it?"

I grinned and pulled my panties down. Stepped out of them and walked back to the bed.

"That's what I'm going to find out. Feel free to cum in me...I want to be an absolutely sticky mess by the time I finish."

The best part of telling him to creampie me is that I never had to tell him twice.

The information I wanted wasn't the search data itself, it was how to read and interpret that. Which meant I was searching for Drake Industries corporate data. Patent applications, owner manuals, product catalogs—they couldn't afford not to put a vast amount of information out on the Matrix where anybody could read it; what they hoped is that no-one would piece it together to reveal something more than they intended. Real secret research would be kept under wraps, but as I worked my way through masses of product data, I could see the patterns, find the clues, decipher their methodology.

The key turned out to be an ancient press release, twenty-five years ago. Not connected directly with their augmentation research at all, but a joint archaeological project between Drake Industries and the University of the Grey Havens conducted in the Eco-Garth of Isengard, the oldest extant arcology, and the only one dedicated to preserving a bit of the ancient forest. Getting permission to dig in the ruins there had required a lot of political pull, corporate funding, and public-private research agreements regarding sharing discoveries.

In the excavations of the tower, they'd found a cache of ancient documents. An excited university professor had hinted they related to the ancient genetic engineering techniques that had led to the creation of supersoldiers during the Last War.

Uruk-Hai. Medical corps had been trying to remake them for years. Yet even the people they called Uruk-Hai today were usually just hybrids, Goblin-Men made from artificial insemination, able to deal with sunlight and vat-grown in artificial wombs that ensured proper nourishment for a better class of Orc and Goblin. Orc trafficking was real business, but vatborn Orcs...I'd heard rumors, everybody on the street had, but the cost of growing your own Orc to order? Caring for them as they matured to adulthood? That required a lot of creds.

"Manwë's prick," I swore under my breath. Those fuckers had dug up Saruman's personal notes on making Uruk-Hai. Real Uruk-Hai. And here, twenty-five years later, was a twenty-something Orc woman with a Drake Industries barcode tattooed on her arm.

Rowana Rowethasdottir was fucking one of the first batch of successful Orc supersoldier prototypes.

Maybe I would have kept muttering to myself as the questions raced through my head, but Aubert's mouth found mine. His dick plunged in and out of me, and it already felt like he was churning his cum into a froth inside my pussy. I logged out and let my tongue explore his mouth. He had already disconnected my limbs and plugged them in to recharge. Maybe because he was a considerate boyfriend. Maybe because he wanted to rail me like his personal fuckdoll.

At the moment, I didn't care.