The difference between the Outer and Inner rings was stark.
The Outer Ring's streets were cracked and filled with trash. The buildings were like desolate, mismatching blocks, the mega buildings monoliths to the brutal, capitalist regime that built the city and left the poor to fend for themselves. Mega screens adorned many of the mega buildings sides, advertising garbage that the residents didn't need and few could afford.
The Middle Ring was significantly better off. The roads were damaged, but cared for. Work zones dotted the city, repairing the older buildings or contructing new ones. Trash still littered the sidewalks here and there, but were cleaned up regularly. Few buildings stuck out, the entirely middle ring seemed to conform to single style. While the Outer Ring's buildings were often bare metal, the Middle Ring's brought in glass to accentuate the metal frames. The mega screens here were larger, more crisp in image, and more than a few were instead holograms projected from the side of a building, allowing for advertising in the third dimension.
The contrast of the two rings was extreme, and Grey could only imagine how much better the Inner Ring was. He'd never been, and likely never would. Just moving from the Outer Ring to the Middle was a lifetime achievement, and living in the Inner Ring was a fairytale for people like him.
He rarely got to visit the Middle Ring, mercenaries had a different circle here and Outer Ring mercs had to build a reputation before they could try their hand in the Middle Ring.
"Grey."
Grey turned to Ren, realizing he had been lost in thought. "Sorry, kid. Where are we going?"
Ren pointed to a mega building two blocks south of them, "MB thirty four, sixtieth floor."
Grey followed his finger, "Yeah? I'm not seeing a mega screen on that one....oh, no. Ren, don't tell me you want to hit the holo?"
Ren remained dead pan and said nothing.
Stealing from a normal mega screen was one thing, but holo protectors were much riskier targets. Grey could see why Ren wanted it, though. The power cables in a holo could pull a lot more juice, and Ren didn't want to risk having to hit a second screen if he wouldn't find the cable he needed in the first.
"Alright, fine. Tell me about it on the way."
Over the next two blocks Ren explained his thoughts, matching up pretty well with Grey's own thinking. The heavy duty cable was likely to be more than they needed, but he could just modulate the current so it was mostly a redundancy. It also gave their cover more credibility, as mega buildings had hundred of tenants, most of whom were responsible for their own maintenance. Just another way the corps pawned off an expense to someone else.
Getting into the building proved to be no problem. Many of the lower floors were often used as shopping centers, while the higher ones were apartments. There was little to now security from the building entrance until the business/apartment doors.
Ren's plan was to take the main elevator to the fifty fifth floor, then use a service way to the sixtieth, where the holo projector could be accessed.
As the two made their way to the elevator, situated at the center of the ground floor, Grey took note of the surroundings. The walls were full of built-in shops, while the main floor was filled with dozens of pop-up tents and carts. Hundred of people shuffled through, stopped to haggle, or slipped away with credits pilfered from unwary shoppers.
The walls had a fair amount of cameras, but in this jungle of tents security was next to worthless. Grey and Ren wouldn't stick out more than anyone else.
Grey made his way forward, on hand firmly on Ren's shoulder in front of him, the other tight on his tool bag. He carried no credits and anything valuable was in the bag.
Someone bumped into Grey and he felt a strong tug on the bag, but a sharp jerk and hard glare let the would-be theif know he wasn't a mark to be taken advantage of. The thief bare glanced back at him before disappearing into the crowd, neither party wishing to make a scene. They were both here to steal, after all.
Ren led the way to the elevator, snaking through people with his small size. Grey wasn't a large man, but he was big enough that he had to push his way through more often than not.
The main elevator wasn't much different from the one in their own mega building, a large industrial thing made with efficiency in mind, though this one was better kept and while didn't focus on comfort at least offered benches along the sides for those who'd be on for longer. Reaching the upper floors could take a significant amount of time, those at the top often chose to take the stairs several floors below their destination as it could be faster.
The main elevator only stopped every five floors. Going to each individual floor in a building with over a hundred of them would make it worthless. Stair, ramps, and smaller freight elevators would handle travel between those floors. Hitting their target of the fifty fifth floor, nearly halfway up the building, would take about thirty minutes.
Grey took the lead from Ren as they entered the elevator, making way to an empty spot on the benches that lined that way. Once the two were squared away, they had time to kill, and both turned to occupying themselves with thought. Ren continued working on the design for the generator, among brainstorming other projects he'd yet to start.
Grey instead went back to thinking about the implant, as was habit these days.
There was just too much about it that he didn't know. Where it really came from, why it spoke to him. The physical ramifications of it merging with his biology. The AI that lives within it. Ren had said it was alien tech, and not from any of the alien races humanity had met so far.
The mere idea that he had advanced technology from an unknown civilization was a thought too heavy for him right now.
Thirty minutes passed quickly for the both of them, Grey had to shake Ren out of his project planning. The young man led Grey out of the main elevator, down the hall and into a smaller elevator, this one used to move people between the next five floors individually.
After just a couple minutes they exited on floor fifty-eight and took the stairs to the fifty-nineth. Ren wanted to avoid taking any singular route right to their goal, claiming that it would be harder to track their movements if anyone tried to investigate the theft afterwards. From here on they'd be doing the more overtly illegal things.
They made their way to the west side of the building before stopping in front of a blank wall.
"The service entrance is here." Ren turned to Grey and began digging around in the bag, pulling out a small device with a single screen. It was clearly self made, Grey even thought it could be a small IED. He dismissed the idea, Ren wouldn't use an explosive to open a door, not when they were sneaking around. But he had no doubts his partner would hesitate to use one when needed.
Ren tapped the screen and it flickered to life. He pointed it at the wall, moving it back and forth until tapping it twice more, and the wall before then clunked and slide aside.
"You made a bypass?" Grey asked as they quickly shuffled into the narrow service shaft and the door slid shit behind them. "I kinda figured you just hacked everything."
The service shaft was just a metal catwalk, a meter wide, between the external shell of the building and the building proper. It allowed for some insulation from the outside weather, keeping the interior more stable. It doubled as easy armoring against a hovercar crash and tripled as advertisment space, city ordinance banned adverts on buildings, but the outer shell was technically not part of the building.
All three of these meant one thing to the building owners: more profit.
More stable temperatures meant less spent heating or cooling. A hovercraft crash resulted in no damage to rented areas, an at most a replaced panel in the shell. And advertisements were just outright free money.
"I used to, but it took too long. My bypass tool uses a custom hacking program I made and does it significantly faster." Ren took a glance down the shaft, before leading Grey northward. "We'll take a ladder up to the next floor, it's right next to the holo."
Grey just shook his head and followed. Of course Ren had made his own hacking program. He'd been a fool to think Ren wouldn't make a tool for better efficiency.
After about thirty meters the duo reached the ladder, Ren turned to Grey and gestured to it, indicating for him to go first.
Grey sighed and jumped on it, quickly making the climb to the next floor. Any other time he'd remind Ren to use his words and that just pointing to what he wanted and expecting others to understand was often rude and would almost always lead to disappointment when they didn't understand. Ren constantly forgot that others weren't as smart as he was, instead thinking his intelligence was the norm.
But this time, Ren had the right of it. They were officially trespassing and couldn't risk someone hearing them. Their footsteps were easily hidden by the normal shaking of the catwalk as wind slammed against the outer shell.
After a moment, Grey poked his head up to the next floor and immediately pulled himself back.
Someone was there, and if Grey was right, they were working the very thing they were here for.