You arrive at your apartment

It’s your new home for the hopefully not-so-long stay on this planet. You know that you have to keep your distance from the ship and Jane in order to avoid drawing attention to them. The only good news is that you arrived with the data core without encountering a single issue so you immediately start the process of uploading the contents to Sid over an encrypted channel and wait.

The upload still has about thirty minutes to go, so you decide to use the time to check out the local news and find out more about the new neighborhood you're in on the planetary net.

You are engrossed in your reading when the console lets out a chime indicating the upload has completed successfully. This is quickly followed by a second chime signaling an incoming transmission from Sid.

"Celeste," Sid says, picking up. "The data came through and I am transferring it to the client as we speak. Standby." After a moment, Sid let out a small, satisfied sigh. "Ok the transfer is complete and the client is extremely pleased; they really did not think this job was possible. This puts me in a great mood as well as this was top-tier clientele."

"Good. I am glad this mess was worth it to you," you say, exhausted by the entire ordeal.

"I have transferred the payment to the usual bank accounts as requested," Sid continues. "I made sure one of the wires was the promised thousand credits to your local account. I've also taken the liberty of paying off the apartment’s rent for the next three months.

"As for the Hugo 'problem', I identified a leak in my organization and the matter is being dealt with, but it appears someone wants to remove me from the market. This might not surprise you as there's plenty of competition in this line of work but this means that there may be others who know about you. Hugo was a trusted agent I’ve used repeatedly in the past, yet someone still offered him a sum large enough to change his loyalties which is concerning. Few people have pockets that deep or would find it worth the cost to do so.

"I should mention that Hugo had extensive cybernetic modifications done on his body so I hope he fell from a great height when he took his plummet. Otherwise, he's probably still alive. If he is, hopefully he’s so severely damaged he won’t be able to recover or transmit his location any longer," he says with a grimace.

You consider the fact you could have one more problem now and consider smashing the console in frustration before you finally respond.

"So what you are saying is that a crazed cyborg, massively pissed off by having to crawl across the planet for who knows how long, may turn up to come after me sooner or later?" you ask in disbelief. "Knowing my luck too, it will be sooner if his current employer deems it economically viable and decides to find and salvage what's left of him. They already clearly dropped quite a bit of money into buying him off."

"Which means that it isn’t that big of a stretch. You got it," he replies "More than likely there is a support team for Hugo stationed somewhere on the planet. Luckily the leak on this end was found before I rented this apartment, otherwise I expect you would have met them by now."

"One last thing, Celeste. Destroy that data core; you know the score. Sid out," he says as the screen goes black.

Looking at the data core you decide to hang on to it until you can get off the planet. There is no way you are listening to Sid in this case. There is a chance you might be able to use it as a bargaining chip if it comes down to it!

Time to explore Evindium!