In the center of Upper Canterlot the large angular steel skyscraper of Equi-Tech dominates the early morning sky heavily illuminating the foggy city streets below.

“Sir, do you have a moment?” a smartly dressed assistant asked as she strode into the room.

Behind the large black executive desk in the center of the room a cream colored stallion taps his hooves together in an impatient manner before turning around to face his assistant, a look of annoyance forming on his features.

“What is it, this had better be important!” he responded, half shouting.

“Yes, the… agents you hired are on the move, their leader has contacted us and they intend to hit the target within the hour” the business pony started to sweat noticeably.

The cream colored stallion thought for a moment then said calmly “Good, Be sure to keep an eye on them should they need a quick escape”

“Very good, Mr. Sun” the business pony said before turning to leave the room.

Sun put a hoof to his mouth in thought for a moment before letting out a small chuckle “Lets see how this pans out shall we?”

Access waited for his comrades to leave before barring closed the reinforced door behind them, it wasn’t smart to leave yourself exposed while fully immersed in the Net and he knew that feeling all too well. He started to hyperventilate as he sat back down next to his Cyberdeck and his senses gave way to blinding light, deep immersion always had this effect on him.

Gathering his thoughts and shaking off the disorientation that comes with the territory he entered the city sub-net, a sea of neon light that despite its entirely digital nature was similar in structure to a large city complete with streets, shops and the occasional roaming service program.

You could find anything you wanted here from media to games and even holidays, some ponies spend nearly their entire lives on the Net but Access was here for one reason, he wanted to gather Intel on their target and call in a couple of favors of his.

Picking up speed into a brisk trot he noted the rather high level of security the sub-net had today, some of the guard programs scanned him as he moved past them to which Access gave but a moment of attention.

Sub-nets such as this always had Guard programs around to keep the order and to stop the locals from messing with anything they shouldn’t, normally this ended with a painful ejection back to Realspace.

Directing his attention towards a nearby set of structures, Access entered one of his favorite spots on the Net, a digital cafe named “Haven” which could house hundreds of thousands of concurrent users in a Virtual Reality chat room with multiple Private and Public areas. It was a popular spot for younger ponies and was almost always abuzz with chatter and very easy to hide a conversation in.

Picking out a free booth out of the way of the other patrons he sat down with an audible sigh, you didn’t get many virtual spaces of this level of detail in the Net, despite the rough hewn wood and stone decor being from many decades in Equestria’s past it still felt like home. A far cry from the steel and concrete jungle the city and beyond had become.

“Now to wait, she can’t be far off now...” Access whispered to himself, his eyes scanning across the room at the other patrons, the last thing he needed was to see Netwatch whom he was well known by due to his past antics.

It wasn’t long until an avatar of a slate gray Unicorn mare arrived in Haven, Access turned to look at her from the corner of his eye and was relieved to see that it was the avatar of his friend and fellow Netrunner, Sheet Rock.

“Hey hey! Access!” Sheet Rock shouted in Access’ direction with a big wave of her forehoof.

Access jumps at the voice with an audible yelp, he relaxes somewhat as Sheet Rock sits down across the booth from him still with that trademark goofy smile she always seemed to have plastered on her face.

“Don’t do that, I’m on edge as it is!” Access pants between breaths.

Sheet Rock lets out a playful giggle “Sorry Access, I haven’t seen you around in a while and got a bit excited!”

Access laughed alongside Sheet Rock for a while before putting a serious look on his face “Me and the crew have this job, but we need access to Upper-Canterlot’s comms hub specifically the server farm”

Sheet Rock giggled for a few moments more before composing herself “I can get you in without much issue so you can disable security, but the boots on the ground I cannot help beyond some maps I’m afraid.”

Sheet Rock clearly had gotten these credentials from somewhere shady but he couldn’t bring himself to ask where from, though he knew they’d be legitimate it was likely to be one use only and they wouldn’t likely get a second chance at this.

He sat back in his seat a little in thought before saying “Our job is data retrieval, do you know what that comms hub could be storing that would cause a Megacorp to go to such lengths?”

Sheet Rock thought for a moment, then a sly smile came across her lips “Rumor has it that its weapons plans or some such, nobody can rightly say.”

“That seems likely at the price they are paying” Access said in annoyance “How do you know this?”

Sheet rock made a gesture implying that her lips were sealed “Can’t say, you know I gotta protect my sources”

Access got up out of his seat to leave but turned his head towards Sheet Rock to speak “Thanks, I’ll be sure you get paid for this, and send me those maps and access codes too”

Sheet Rock called up an AR screen and sent over a few files to Access’ Cyberdeck “Sure, Just don’t get yourselves killed over this. It’d be bad for my health if Canterlot officials knew I gave you these”

Access nodded with a playful grin and left the cafe with the information he came for metaphorically in hoof, then made the jump to the comms hub’s location on the Net.

It was swarming with Passive Defense programs, but the codes Sheet Rock gave him should render all that null and void leaving it wide open. Access sat in wait for his friends to give him the go ahead.

In their blacked out van Titus, Cloud Rider and Red Star were safely casing the location from some distance away assessing the level of security and it was just as lax just as they had been told it would be.

“Access should have our help by now” Titus stated while taking stock of the amount of security, totaling no more than six lightly armed guards and maybe half a dozen exterior cameras.

Red Star nodded and opened a comm-link to Access “Access, Do you have that help yet, we’re waiting on you”

“Yeah, it should let us slip right in and from there I should be able to shut off the cameras and locks. Standby for maps of the complex.”

“Good, do your thing Access. We’re counting on you!”

Red Star despite her usual demeanor looked relieved as the three of them left the van out of sight and made their move towards the complex. They needed to be sure they were not seen as they didn’t have the benefit of doing this at night.

The foggy weather would cover their approach but it wouldn’t help them once they were inside, Having gone over the maps Access had acquired the complex had many tight corners and alcoves that could be used for cover once they were beyond the outer fence.

In the Net, Access received the signal to commence his attack run, moving quickly through the outer edges of the Comms-Hub's sub-net he came to a dark, monolithic structure. This clearly was the outer walls of the system and inside were the programs he would need to interact with.

This would be a simple matter, all he needed to do was enter the codes he was given on the structures display and he’d have some control and most importantly a way to exfiltrate their target data.

“CREDENTIALS. RECOGNIZED. BASIC ACCESS CONFIRMED” blared a robotic voice, it had worked! He now had some control over the security but not for long until he was detected. Half an hour at most.

Access sent a message through his AR display to the rest of the crew reading “It’s done and I have control, killing the cameras and mag-locks now but don’t screw around we’re on a timer here”

The rest of the crew found a timer appear in their AR displays which started to count down from thirty minutes. This was all the time they had until they’d be detected and lose their element of surprise.

The Hit was on.

Author's Note

Things are beginning to hot up for our four friends but are going well, but for how long?

For context Augmented Reality (AR) Displays exist in world as implants and in standalone form, they overlay information on top of something else that normally being the users eyes.

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