CHAPTER 11
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Caiden set up an automatic query, using optical character recognition to populate a variety of results. In the search, there were thousands of links to the material he required. He cross referenced the name findings he found by using the Net Code address he snagged via complex search and retracing methods that required a bit of unorthodox thinking and system processing. Caiden’s mind was running like a well-oiled super machine. Che le Che was concerned about covering his tracks when he created that profile. He did well enough to remain hidden from the authorities and high-level hackers; but not from Caiden. After another hour of intense analysis and research, he got a hit.
Che le Che was revealed to be Prime Minister Shino Honda of Neon District!
“What the fuck? This can’t be right. I need to double check my query,” Caiden said to himself.
After running three more checks on his findings, it was confirmed that CWR user ‘Che le Che’ was Prime Minister Honda. How the fuck did he even find out about my work on Chimera and the Prime-1 job? he asked himself. Shit! Caiden began filtering all the traffic hits of anything related to Shino Honda from the infiltration nodes he implanted in Zonos’s network.
Became prime minister at the young age of twenty-six. Current age; thirty-six. Father of two; a boy and a girl. Names; Eris, seven years old, and Camilla, eleven years old. Wife of seven years; Rinn Honda, thirty-five years old. She was a government transit coordinator and left her career to be a full-time mom. Shino graduated summa cum laude from Orb University. He was the president of the student council. He initiated a major reform for student rights on the campus with the help of the government. He was instrumental in creating a joint Hybrid and Purebred student union. This union was the groundwork allegedly used by Zonos to facilitate relations between the two groups on a city-state scale. One could definitely say that those relationship attempts had largely failed citywide. His influential style could be traced back to his collegiate days for sure. He had the magnetic charisma of a natural born leader. He was groomed and tailored to be the next prime minister after he went to work for Zonos right out of college as a political advisor. He was prodigious.
A notification came up via a holo-popup. Caiden clicked on it and the information read that Honda had a half-sister from the same mother and different father. His sister’s name was Asuka Kohana. Caiden searched for call records or any form of communication between the two. His attempts were unsuccessful. Extracting that information would require a different hack altogether and he hadn't the time. He was, however, able to access what looked like a recent email chain that might have belonged to Honda, or at least had his name mentioned in it. He clicked on the file.
From: [email protected]
Shino, I’ve reached out to Vser as you asked, though I doubt he will show this time, as he never does. That’s his MO. I have bcc’d you on the email just in case. Love you. Talk to you at the meeting.
-Asuka
Bingo! They were too careless! Now it makes sense why Che le Che was at such a discreet meeting among the major hackers of the city. Asuka Kohana must have been Queenalona. That is also how he got the information on the Prime-1 bank job that I did, he thought. He was relieved and angry. Queenalona was a fellow hacker; someone he admired for the work she had put in, fighting in her own way against the establishment. But she violated the ‘hackers code’, if there was one. It couldn’t be helped. Even with this revelation, there was still information yet to be found.
Fine tuning the results from the massive query algorithm, he initiated an even deeper, more detailed search and came across more interesting; top secret material on Prime Minister Honda. There were employee documents, policies he tried to introduce, and policies that called for the amelioration of the Psi-Corp military police. Reports at the time showed that violent incidents with the Psi-Corp military police and the public had reached an all-time high. The highest in twenty years according to the reports. Documents also showed that Honda desperately tried to establish an oversight agency to regulate Psi-Corp policing activity. He was denied every single time. The string of attempts spanned across three and a half years before they stopped completely. What halted his attempts were repeated sanctions against the limits of his position. There were also documents that divulged information on the freezing of huge financial assets of the Honda family name. But from who? The sign off on all the sanction documents merely say ‘Zonos Government’ and that’s it. Very odd.
Caiden came across a few multimedia files that looked like surveillance footage. There was no supporting metadata on the video files. No dates, times or locations. Someone had tampered with these before they were stored away. Caiden pulled up one of the videos and played it. There were three men dressed in all black cornering a man. The man who was cornered was clearly shaken and bloody, but conscious. Caiden paused the video and magnified it one hundred and twenty-five percent. He transferred the video file to the holo-display from the base of his computer. Rotating the paused video a couple degrees, he took a closer look at the victim. It was Shino Honda.
What the hell did this guy get himself into? Caiden rotated the holo-video to see if he could identify the attackers. No luck. Their faces were conveniently blurred out. What about weapons? They were all were armed, but only one had their weapon drawn. The assailants were huge, at least six feet, six inches and looked like they weighed a ton each. They
