Nora, hearing noise, turned around and froze. Through a gap in two shipping containers, she could see Black Light. Why was he here when she was here too, of all times?
"Should we see what he's up to, Bit?" she whispered.
Yes.
"All right." Ducking behind a container, she activated her Aurora code and began sneaking, noiselessly, towards Black Light.
“Bit-brained null unit.” Cor growled to himself in frustration, thinking about the program who told him about this job. It wasn't really his fault but Cor really didn't like dealing with middlemen, even when it was necessary… If they were competent then it wasn't as bad but still annoying. He preferred knowing exactly who he was working for or having more details about a job.
Nora peered out from behind a shipping container. What's he doing?
The information to be stored in the data cube, meanwhile, was in a screen on the side of one of the shipping containers. The screens usually stored things like trackers and the container's contents, but this one had encrypted data, sent to Astra from across the waves.
“Oh, finally!” Cor sighed in relief as he recognized the area he was supposed to go to. “Took me longer to find the building than to find the data. That's a first.” he chuckled when he saw the information and it didn't take him long to find the encryption that he was paid to look for.
He was getting more information, apparently. Nora frowned slightly. She still had her suspicions about him, but she had come here for a nice, quiet night. She turned to leave, planning to deactivate her Aurora code once she was far enough away, but suddenly, her foot caught on something and she fell, with a grunt, to the cold, hard ground.
Cor was reflexively on guard at the sudden sound, his disc glowing in his hand as he spun in the direction of the noise. He clutched the data cube protectively as he scanned the area around him. Even though he didn't see any Black Guards, he didn't relax yet.
"Cubes," Nora muttered under her breath, getting to her feet as quickly as possible. It was all over now: she either stood here and he found her, or she found him.
She decided to take the latter option.
"Collecting data again?" she asked coolly, striding towards him, checking the ground as she went, Bit bobbing after her.
“Oh, it's just you.” Cor sighed as he holstered his disc. “You had me going there for a while. What are the odds that we’d run into each other again?” he chuckled, tossing the data cube in the air slightly. “To answer your question, yes, I am here on a job. What are you doing here?”
Nora's mind went blank for a moment. She couldn't give him her true reason, that much was obvious.
"I have my reasons," she said eventually.
Cor raised a brow at how long it took her to answer but gave a small shrug. “I’m sure you do.” he drawled, leaning against one of the containers. “You know I was just asking if you came here because of some trouble or if you just enjoyed the scenery.” he pointed out.
"Trouble?" She tilted her head. "I travel with trouble." She nodded at Bit.
“Trouble for you or for who you fight?” Cor laughed, not making fun of her but acting as if he didn't know how much trouble a Bit could be.
She folded her arms. "Both."
Cor laughed again but nodded slightly. “I guess I'll just have to see it to believe it.” he smirked.
Nora nodded; Bit bobbed up and down in the air. Yes, yes, yes.
"Why are you here?" Nora asked.
“I’m on a job.” he shrugged, tossing the cube briefly. “Though I don't really know what kind of data someone could get from this kind of place.” he admitted.
Nora looked around. "Shipping information, probably. Though why someone would want that is beyond me."
Cor nodded and glanced at the cube. “You wanna take a look with me? It may not tell us exactly why my client wants this data but at least we’ll know what kind of data I’m supposed to bring them.” he offered with a brief shrug.
She nodded and took a step toward him; Bit bobbed rather closer, looping around his head once and returning to Nora. And then I can keep an eye on you, too.
Cor chuckled lightly at the familiar pattern of the Bit before opening the data. It was encrypted, of course, but he made short work of translating it so they could read it easily.
"It just looks like shipping information," Nora noted, peering at it. And indeed, it looked like it. Unbeknownst to her, it actually contained details of weapons shipments - each "item" was actually a codename for something else; "12 lightcycles" actually meant "12 stun guns" and so forth. It was a part of Astra's cunning: to the layman, the information was harmless.
Cor frowned slightly as he looked at the data. “This doesn't feel right… If this is all the information is, why encrypt it? And why hire someone like me to get it?” he asked aloud, not really expecting an answer.
"Maybe it's supposed to be too easy," Nora said, also thinking aloud. "You can also be arrested for searching shipping containers or obtaining that information without approved programming. I doubt whoever hired you wanted to run that risk."
Cor gave a low rumbling hum and a slight nod at her thoughts. “Possibly… but encrypting this still doesn't make much sense to me.” he admitted, letting the data close.
"Check if there's encrypted data further in," Nora suggested. Indeed, there would be, but it had incredibly complicated encryptions.