Penetration Testing: Chapter 4

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#4 of PenTesters

The break-in at EroTech continues, and Mimi can't shake the sense that something's just not right.


The Pen Testing Crew

Chapter 4

By StripedKittyScribe


Systemic Feedback isn't your typical crew of cyberpunks. Almost all of them are former corpo-employees who went independent after a couple of them were downsized. Feedback leads his crew doing things that keep them hiding in plain sight. Besides, how else are you going to get the corpo-drones to pay you to break into their companies?

This story may contain characters that are gender-non-conforming and have physical adaptations that match this. It may further contain group sex of essentially any and all permutations, violence, crimes, and non-consensual/dubious consensual sex. Please do not consume this work of fiction if you are not of the age of majority in your jurisdiction.


EroTech Headquarters: 1st, 0010

Mimi drifted away from the local command node. Shi'd just put hir mods and Spring's on the local allow-list, and shi was still confused. Hir subroutines had given just about every single warning that could possibly be given before they ran. Why?

Because all of the normal ICE that shi was expecting to encounter was utterly absent. The whole place felt empty. Empty, but maintained. Like a set of girders thrown up to be a framework for a skyscraper that was partially funded, and the workers kept the construction site swept up, while they were waiting for the arrival of more materials or more funding.

It was eerie. There should be streams of data going all over the place. Or little packets being carried around by bots or cranes or... something. There wasn't anything, not even roaming ICE bots. It was both the cleanest, and most useless intranet security shi'd ever seen. The fact of the matter was that shi could imagine something like this being acceptable but only in terms of being behind walls of meat-space guns, with all of the access ports being guarded by a physical presence on both sides with escort required on both sides of the plug at all times.

The lack of an 'anything' had hir on edge to the point that shi wondered if that was part of the security plan; put any hostile netrunners so on edge that they'd do something stupid. Well, if that was their play, they wouldn't catch hir, at least not like that.

The plan called for hir to send the codes to give Spring the override for her cell, and shi'd done that. But with Mimi having all of Spring's tools, it only allowed for a 'meet up somewhere' step rather than anything else. Spring hadn't given the signal that she was out yet, which meant that Mimi had some time to play with. So that's what shi did; shi started searching for all of the places where research data that they could steal was kept.

That was when shi realized what was going on with this particular network. It was alternately brilliant, and idiotic. Brilliant, and it explained why there wasn't anything here to find; for the most part there literally wasn't anything of value on this network. It was just a set of 'roads' that led to the various parts of the network, with the meat-space security being the least important part.

There were more of those black-hole things, and they weren't even labeled. The reason that it was idiotic was that it essentially locked down any kind of communication over the network. In order to send data from one black hole to another, you had to physically transfer the data to another access point, and send it there. Unless there was some sort of physical switch that opened things up during working hours? Shi shook hir head. Too many variables. Shi jacked out of the console and sent a message to Spring. 'Status?'

*

Bonus checked the clock, again. He hated being on the outside during a job like this. It wasn't something he was comfortable doing, especially with Mimi and Spring probably needing physical security on the inside.

His fingers clenched at the steering wheel of the getaway van. Feedback hadn't been able to watch the entry, and had left that to him. Bonus understood why; physical violence upset the canine, especially when it was applied to members of his family, by members of his family. The fact that it was staged helped slightly, but it would distract Feedback for the rest of the night, and that was something they couldn't risk.

The plan would work. It always did. Mimi and Spring were talented, and they knew how to work with each other. The hardest part was over, at least in terms of 'mission critical' objectives. Now they just needed to get out. Getting out without raising alarms was preferred but not required. Getting the data shouldn't be that hard, now that they were on the inside. He just had to have faith.

And sit here.

Waiting.

Sure, he was 'monitoring' things but simply seeing the status updates from Mimi wasn't doing anything to calm him down, especially with her added comments that 'shit was weird'. Spring hadn't said anything yet, but that wasn't wholly shocking. She'd probably be getting 'interviewed' for at least a little bit. Just how rough that interview would go depended on how much the idea of her 'working' for another, larger corp intimidated the guards at EroTech. He expected they wouldn't be too harsh with her. The guards hadn't used any more force than they had to in order to protect their asset, at least by corpo standards.

An update posted just as he was reaching for his water. 'Guards left. I'm fine.'

He heard Feedback let out an audible sigh from the back of the van.

*

Spring would have to remember to use this cover again, if possible, if she was going to have to be 'taken' by guards. It was never one of their first options, but it was a very powerful card in their deck, if they played it right. She normally didn't like being associated with the bigger corps, just because it was distasteful, but damn if being 'part' of Mistberg-Springtown-Remings-Pointer Arms hadn't worked out in her favor this time.

They had 'deactivated' all of her combat mods, but Mimi had already gotten them on the allow list. She tested to see if any alarms or response was forthcoming by activating her least-lethal one, and when no one came in a few minutes, she got the rest of them back online.

Mimi was doing her usual thing of being a virtual ghost, and dummying cameras and sensors. It made for a tense, but uneventful rendezvous. The transfer of gear and equipping herself took only a half minute, thanks to Spring's skillful prep and relentless practice.

It gave Mimi enough time to explain just what the real issue was, and why they couldn't essentially get out right away. Feedback and Bonus were looped in as observers on the com.

Spring could just about imagine the stress levels in the van as she deliberated. "Alright. The main database is on the way to the research database, physically. We'll smash and grab that on the way to the research lab's processing system for this new device and then get out. Maybe we'll find something in the main offices and chip their funds while we're at it. Shouldn't be more than a half hour from now, assuming things don't go tits-up. If they do then we'll change course."

She knew that Feedback would be upset. Strictly speaking, she should be prioritizing the mission data first and then getting secondary objectives after that. But she was the one stuck in, and no one would override her call. Plus, it really was a reasonable decision based on physical travel time, something they hadn't really expected to need to do. Thankfully, the lack of any kind of ICE had given Mimi enough time to work the whole building's ECM suite to their favor.

The elevator override system worked, and they rode it up to the next-to-top floor without anyone at a monitoring station being the wiser; all of their boards showed that the elevator was still sitting at the ground level, and since this was the executive car, there shouldn't be anyone trying to use it.

Spring disarmed and removed the various physical barriers while Mimi kept an eye out, both on the net and otherwise. Most of the doors were easy to deal with once she determined what they had for physical lockouts. She was starting to understand what Mimi meant about this being 'weird as shit'. She expected a certain amount of uniformity when dealing with any kind of corp, but this went beyond that.

It wasn't just that they used the same lock, same interface, and same door on every intersection they had to pass by. It wasn't even that there were no physical guards up here 'in the clouds'. Everything felt like it was both literally sterile, and metaphorically slimy. Not in the expected way that would normally just make her round ears flick back in annoyance. No, this felt like it was somehow biologically slick, rather than synthetically or oily. Snot, not SlipEz. Everything was clean as far as she could tell. Physically.

They got to the data center, and Mimi got a look inside. It confirmed hir suspicions. The only way to get data from this system was either a direct connection, or a physical switch. This was both good and bad. It partially explained the black hole. But it was also bad. Hir actions on the network would be as invisible to this system as anything shi did inside it would be invisible to the outside. There was no connection, so no signal for help. But none of the groundwork would have been laid. "This is gonna take a little bit longer." Shi set the first set of external storage on the ground next to where shi took a seat, then started slipping cables into things. "You know the drill. If you see any yellow lights, push the white button. See you in a few."

Spring kept her gun low and at her side as Mimi slipped the visor over hir eyes and then settled back into the chair. The mongoose shook her head as the bunny's body went slack in total relaxation. "Creeps me out every time." She shifted her position so that she could see the doors and all of the telltale lights on the block of equipment that Mimi was running on.

*

"Now this is more like it." Mimi stood on the floor of a library. It had the same basic structure as the external net, but here there were the things that shi expected to see; wandering ICE, and vast piles of data. It wouldn't be too hard. Probably.

The ICE were interesting, and shi would try to get a peek at that code, if shi could manage it. It would be the last thing shi did, though. The first thing to do would be to secure all of that lovely data.

This was the fun part for hir. The only reason shi didn't run up and down the aisles of the database with hir proverbial bag scooping things up was that the wandering ICE patterns were very well done, and there wasn't an easily predictable routine. There were blind spots, of course, but they were always shifting, and shi had to constantly keep moving in order to remain undetected.

Not that being detected would be an instant end to the mission, as the computer couldn't connect to the external network and alert guards. It would just make things much harder for hir. So shi spent the time copying everything rather than outright stealing it.

That was another oddity. Shi hadn't ever seen ICE that was just as focused on the data they were guarding as they were looking for intruders. It was some very sophisticated decision making, and it might be controlled by an actual AI. Shi couldn't see any tethers back to a central hub, but it wouldn't shock hir either way.

The only thing that shi couldn't copy was the pile of credits that shi found. Not a list of accounts (those shi could have copied) but actual tokens. This alone would pay for the risk they'd taken! Shi scooped every last one of those up into hir proverbial bag, and then hung the bag on hir belt and went looking for the central processing algorithm.

When shi found it, shi almost backtracked. That wasn't a full AI but the sophistication was way beyond what shi'd have expected for a corp like EroTech. Whoever had put this thing together had known what they were doing. Maybe the reason that the company was doing so poorly was that they'd overspent on this thing?

Either way, shi scanned it, staying well out of the lines of sight for the ICE drones patrolling around the thing. It was getting challenging to the point that it wasn't fun any more and was just annoying by the time shi was finished.

Egress took a lot more time. Shi must have done something to up the alert level because the number of rovers had tripled. Shi COULD jack out directly from this place but it would hurt if shi wasn't at the exit point. Getting ripped was never easy or fun, or without risk. Shi could short hir own deck out if things went truly sideways and shi just pulled the plug.

Shi made it however, and flicking the switch on an e-bomb with one hand, shi flipped the drones the bird with the other, threw the device, and then exited the system.

When shi was fully out and free, shi pulled the cable from the system's port, and started wrapping up hir kit. "I got everything. Everything in there, and it'll wipe right about..."

The lights on the front of the machine all went white, then red.

"Now. We just made sure that EroTech is going to fold within the week. They had hundreds of thousands in Tokes just sitting in there."

Spring whistled. "Nice. Now can we get the last one done? And will it take as long?"

Mimi waggled hir hand. "Probably not as long but yeah we can get in there and do this."

For whatever reason, this system wasn't in some easily-accessible server room just below the executive suites. No, it was in the actual R&D chairman's office. Spring was in the lead again, and the lack of any roving drones made her fur stand on end. "I don't like this." Not that it needed to be said for Mimi, but Bonus and Feedback weren't around to see the visual cues. "We need to get this done and get out of here. Almost wish that we'd been able to fit parachutes into the kit, we could just have leapt out the building after setting it on proverbial fire."

Mimi nodded, then remembered that Feedback and Bonus weren't physically present. "Yeah this is so sterile that I'm getting haunted hospital vibes off it." Shi shivered.

Spring shook it off as best she could, and led the way down the halls, following directions from Mimi about which turns to take. The doors were similar enough (just higher quality models) to the ones downstairs that she didn't have any real problems getting past them. Each one was a routine at this point; camera under the door to double check, Stiff-Arm slipped in and activated, tug, twist, push, door opened.

Mimi was holding hir own holdout piece down along hir leg, and was tapping the toe of hir chunky boot rapidly. Spring hated the fact that Mimi was walking around in the stupid things, but it was the best solution that they had to getting all of the components in. Platforms did make for a very convenient place to store things, and at least the added weight of the batteries and other things was keeping the center of gravity low.

The bunny's ears were constantly shifting, taking in sounds. "I don't like this. I feel like someone shoved a live wire directly in my ass and has the voltage low. It's not painful but I feel like my fur is buzzing,"

Spring grunted, and slipped through the door to double-check that the room was clear. "We're in the office with the data." She dropped her pistol and slipped it into her waistband after putting the safety on, then started to quickly and competently toss the room. "Jack in, and get this done, then we can get out of here. Maybe you can convince Feedback to slip something else in your ass for being a good girl and finishing this without raising alarms."

Mimi scurried in after the bigger mongoose, hir pistol already slipped into the makeshift holster on hir thigh. "Yeah, getting buttfucked is more your thing than mine. I'll take you on my dick and Feedback in my muzzle while Bonus nails my pussy, thanks. Now shut up and let me work."

Spring had to give it to the little hacker. When Mimi was motivated and running without problems, shi was an insanely good netrunner.

By the time shi'd said 'muzzle', shi already had hir gear set up, and was dropping into the chair to jack into the terminal. "Diving." And with that, Mimi dropped hir visor and slipped into the datastream.

*

"What the actual, imaginative, irrational, negative and positive fuck?"

This was nothing like Mimi had ever seen. It was nothing like shi'd ever even heard of. This wasn't like the external architecture. There were no clean lines or sharp angles. It was all curves, and there wasn't anything that shi recognized as archives of data or anything like that.

There was a void, and there was hir avatar, and there was a... thing. It was some weird combination of plant, computer program, and other. Not exactly animal, but not mineral either.

"UNKNOWN ENTITY DETECTED."

Mimi squealed and covered hir ears in pure reflex as the thunderous voice echoed. How the fuck was it echoing, there wasn't any surface for the sound to bounce off of! Shi quickly dialed back the sensory input to hir ears, and then started trying to pull up hir interface so that shi could start trying to scan this whatever it was and see if what shi was looking for was somehow locked inside of it.

"UNKNOWN ENTITY DETECTED."

At least that time it wasn't brain-rendingly painful. Shi got one of her ICE drones packed up with the command routines that should identify her and put her onto the list of recognized users. Obviously shi was 'authorized', that was what the external physical security was supposed to be for. She shoved the packet of data toward the orb-plant-blob-thing, watching as it darted out to impact on the surface and then get sucked inside. Just like how the black hole thing worked on their external site.

"NEW USER IDENTIFIED. PROCEED WITH INITIAL SCAN AND MAPPING?"

Shi drifted closer to it, maintaining a least enough distance that shi wouldn't have to worry about getting sucked in like hir drone had. For a moment, shi considered denying the scan and mapping, but shi remembered hearing some rumors about a new kind of system that was supposed to base how it did everything off of some initial user scan. It was supposed to be an anti-hacking measure, forcing anyone who went in to leave a trace. Hir plan was to just rip the whole thing out anyway so leaving a trace wasn't the worst thing in the world. "Proceed."

The one thing that shi hadn't anticipated was tentacles. The surface of the thing barely rippled before it shot out a dozen tendrils, wrapping hir up tight and hauling hir into the orb, screaming.

*

Spring wasn't watching the deck at that exact moment. She was busy combing through items to see if there was something they could easily get out the door with. Leaving no footprints behind at this point was not even a consideration. With Mimi stealing all of those tokens, the breakin would be found, sooner rather than later. They wouldn't necessarily tie it to Systemic Feedback, but that was fine. EroTech wouldn't last the week.

Spring's current mission was finding the actual physical toy. The safe was a bit of a bitch to get into, and for a moment, she thought about just cutting the thing out of the wall and ripping the back of the safe off. Doubtless that would spring traps that she knew were there, though.

Thankfully she knew that there WAS an exploit for this model of safe, and she knew that it would work. It just took time. Whoever built the sensor suite for this safe made it so that if the sensor detected anyone in front of it, the keypad would allow three, and only three, attempts to open the lock.

But jiggling that sensor's readings so that it reset gave her unlimited tries. Not that she'd be going through all 10^9 combinations. She knew that there was a short list of about a dozen combinations that were most likely. Spring was only halfway through that list, and was focused on resetting the sensor for the seventh combination.

Because she wasn't looking exactly at the deck that Mimi was plugged into, she didn't see the flash of lights that went from white, to yellow, to red, then back to white.

She heard the squeak of the chair's leather as Mimi's body seized up. Finishing this attempted combination, she heard the click of the safe disarming and opening. She quickly pulled the door wide and scooped the contents into her bag then touched that bag to her back. The magnets took over and secured it in place. Task done, she turned to see the hacker's form arched upward. "Fuck!" She reached out for Mimi's deck.

*

"MIYARA MITSUMO."

The voice was in hir ears. In hir mind. In hir muzzle. In hir... everything. Some of it felt like a physical presence. Shi was wrapped up in the squirming tendrils; arms and wrists, thighs, ankles, throat, cock, waist. Shi had no control over hir limbs. Not that shi was struggling.

Moving, sure. Grinding and thrusting wildly as the whatever-the-fuck-it-was in hir mind simply found the button that triggered all of hir pleasure receptors, and held that button down.

Shi felt someone sucking on hir cock. Shi loved getting hir dick sucked, sure. Who didn't? Even females who had a strapon (nerve-jacked or not) liked it. It was a power trip. It was sensual and delightful. And shi couldn't even say that this was the best shi'd ever had. It honestly wasn't. There was no pretty (or handsome) face locking eyes with hir. But it was so alien. It wasn't a muzzle, or a throat. It felt like a pussy. Like the best parts of being hilt-deep inside of a lover's folds. Only it rippled and drew like the throat of the best trained Joy-toy.

Shi felt finger-tongue-things on hir nipples. Both of them. Hir chest in the outside world was rather modest. A bit of vanity (and the fact that none of hir crew would ever see hir avatar) made hir go a bit bustier in the virtual world. Not syn-tai levels of tits larger than hir head, but somewhere between a C and D cup. Shi felt the living shibari rippling and coiling around globes that were now very much easily larger than hir head. Shi felt someone pinching hir nipples. Just the right amount. And licking them at the same time. And sucking on them. And pulling and rolling and bouncing.

Shi felt cocks inside of hir muzzle, and throat, and ass, and pussy. It wasn't how shi liked it. Shi liked feeling someone's body against hirs, their thighs slapping at the back of hir legs or their balls spanking hir ass. There was none of that. And the shapes weren't anything found in nature; ridged for hir pleasure but broad, long, thick and with swells that could have been knots, or medial rings, or flares or.... Anything.

Shi felt every single caress. No slime, no dripping or slickness that wasn't specifically for the purpose of making the sexual act easier. Shi had absolutely no idea how it had removed hir digital clothing. Shi had no idea how it had hauled hir in.

At that moment, shi didn't care. Shi was cumming so hard that the worst part was the lack of buildup. There was no teasing, no kissing. No caresses or fumbling or giggling. There was no heated spank or clutch of a lover's hand. It was the sexual act in its lewdest possible form, without the things that made sex part of who shi was.

Mimi was, in a word, a slut. Shamelessly so. Shi loved being with anyone and everyone. Forming that connection, brief and intense. Shi loved getting and giving. Shi loved feeling that moment of release, feeling hir lover quiver, feeling the slack panting moaning purring growling groaning weight against hir. Or hir against it.

The fact that this was easily the most physically intense release of hir life made no difference. Shi literally came so hard shi blacked out. The system logged hir out. Hir deck was flashing and alerts were piling up for the insensate user to review at a later point.

Shi got all of the data that was in the system. When one brought enough storage to house several corporate databases, even the most intense system can simply be cloned.

The strange part wasn't that shi got the data. The strange part wasn't even that shi erased it all on EroTech's server. The strange part was that shi didn't command any such thing. The system itself simply partitioned a drive on hir deck, migrated itself over, then killed it's original copy.

*

Mimi's body went slack. There was smoke coming out of one of the platform heels where the battery had overheated. The bodysuit shi was in clung as tightly to hir as it had in the first place, but for the first time that night, hir nipples were printing through the material.

Spring could see those high beams, as well as a spreading patch of wetness on the bunny's crotch. She recognized that it was either an extremely short urine leakage, or their hacker had... just cum all over hirself. "Mimi. Mimi! Get up! The fuck is wrong with you?!" She shook the smaller body.

No response.

Spring looked at the deck to make sure it was off, which meant that it would be safe to remove the visor without trauma.

Mimi's eyes were utterly blank.

If Spring's fingers weren't telling her for sure that Mimi's heart was still going, rapidly even, she would have thought that her lover was dead. She felt the surge of bile crawling up her throat. She felt the wash of cold slime pouring down her back as the need to panic and scream slammed through her brain.

Training took over. "Two for One, Two for One, Four is flat. I say again, Four is flat. Non responsive. No alarms on target. Mission objectives met. Will need assistance at door. Please advise if primary is still good." She heard a vast gulf of nothing in response. For just an instant, she worried that they had, in fact, been made. That they'd triggered an internal silent alarm and lockdown.

"Three for Two. Copy."

Shit. Shit, fuck, damn, piss cock godsdamnedwhore... That meant that Feedback wasn't able to process things right now. That meant that she was in charge. And that Bonus was going to be the one at the door. At least, until Feedback got himself under control.

"Two copies. Have Three. ETA three minutes."

She quickly shoved Mimi's equipment into holsters and harnesses, then slung the bunny over her shoulder and strode out of the office. No one cared if someone was trying to get out. For once in her life, she wasn't grateful that security could be so lax because it made her job easier. It did, of course.

Right now it could mean the difference toward whether Mimi would be a bunny for the rest of hir life, or a vegetable.


This story is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to any characters, living, dead or imaginary is purely a coincidence. All characters are a product of the author's imagination and copyright to them, unless noted guest appearances of other copyrighted characters are listed in this notice. Comments may be left (and are encouraged!) on the author's FurAffinity SoFurry page. If you liked this story, and wish to support the author, please visit their Patreon.

This story is a work of fiction. Any immoral acts included in this story are a fantasy and should not be taken as encouragement to perform or endorsement of these acts by the author. Specifically, because apparently it needs to be said; anything other than expressed consent for any sexual encounter by a legal unimpaired sentient adult is wrong, immoral, and evil. Unwilling subjugation of sentients who have committed no crime is wrong, immoral, and evil.