Mardock Scramble полностью

She needed to think for herself, decide what her best course of action might be and act on it.

“Oh, by the way… Do you mind if I ask you something in return?”

–What?

“To do with Shell’s hidden memories…” The Doctor seemed awfully reluctant all of a sudden, as if he were terrified of imposing on her.

Balot put her hand to her mouth.

–I’m sorry. I’d completely forgotten.

She was speaking the truth.

Then she blurted out:

–Chips.

“Chips…?”

–One of Shell’s casinos is called Eggnog Blue. They have chips worth a million dollars each there, and he’s hidden these special media storage devices inside them.

“A million-dollar casino chip, eh? Well, well…a hidden treasure-within-a-treasure, huh?” The Doctor looked at Balot, full of admiration. “Well done, a great spot. You’re really quite something.”

–Tweedledum helped me. I never would have been able to work it out on my own. There’s a strict ban on taking the chips out of the casino, and other than at the big Shows the punters rarely get a chance to see them.

“They’re probably there as a way for other companies in the OctoberCorp group to secrete away some of their accumulated funds. They deposit a million dollars in the casino as a way of laundering money. At the same time, it’s great for the casino as the chip becomes an ostentatious sign that the casino has funds in reserve.”

–Yup. It looks like they were doing exactly as you say, Doctor.

“But to go out of your way to hide your memories in there…”

–I looked at the production records for the chips, and there were traces of evidence that they had been made specially. The records themselves had been deleted, but there were still fragments of data flying around, so I reconstructed them.

“Amazing. I know you had the might of all of Paradise’s facilities behind you, and Tweedledum’s support, but even so it’s pretty incredible that you managed all that in just a few hours.”

–I wouldn’t mind trying it again sometime.

Balot laughed as she spoke. The Doctor rolled his eyes. “Violation of Commonwealth law and aggravated hacking—you’re looking at up to twenty years in prison. If you don’t play your cards right you won’t be able to go near another computer for almost half a century, either. So just do me one small favor, will you—don’t go near that thing again unless absolutely necessary.”

–I’m sorry.

Balot seemed to grow smaller. She’d been told off for something similar by Oeufcoque not that long ago, and here she was doing it again. She needed to wield her power from a state of readiness. She was done with abusing power. She felt truly ashamed.

“No, don’t feel sorry. It just means that, in reality, you’ve taken a whole load of risk upon yourself, and you need to be ready for that. So, back to those million-dollar chips—how many of them are there?”

–Twelve in the whole casino.

“That’s quite a lot…all containing Shell’s memories?”

–No, just four of them. The ones that have the OctoberCorp company emblem stamped on them. They’re made by special order.

“I see…”

–What are we going to do? Steal them?

She was half joking, but—

“Robbing a casino is just as tricky as robbing a bank, you see. Burglary should be our last resort.”

Balot was a little surprised that the Doctor took her question seriously.

“We could ask the DA to conduct an official investigation, but once Shell works out what we’re up to it’ll be too easy for him to palm his chips off somewhere else. And if Shell warns OctoberCorp, we’ll be letting the big fish get away. We need to move carefully. Let’s see if we can be granted special search privileges—but no…” The Doctor muttered to himself in this vein for a while.

Then, all of a sudden, “Hmm. I think the best thing for starters is to head on in as if we’re ordinary punters.” He grinned at Balot. It was somewhat disconcerting—almost as if he were raring to go, looking forward to the prospect.

“Balot… I’m going to ask Oeufcoque too. I think he will agree with my decision, but—”

–Yes? What?

“Have you ever played at a casino before?”