Lacia Teranova sat at her computer terminal, bundled in a blanket and illuminated by the dull glow of the monitor. The air was cold here, 3000 feet off the surface in a cramped apartment, up with only the clouds and air traffic outside the window for company. Sometimes, a megacorp ship would pass by, or a delivery drone would fly past on its way to a customer’s window, but most of the time it was either fog or the faraway cityscape below.

The apartment was almost silent, save for the steady hum of computer fans. Outside, footsteps approached. With a tap and a beep, the door swung open revealing Janek Valcetta, Lacia’s roommate, clutching a bag of unidentified pills in one hand and an outdated phone in the other. “Hey, sup” he slurred in Lacia’s general direction, flipping his hair as he turned around to close the door. “Yeah, hey. If you’re going to cook something keep it down, i’m doing some pretty intense hacking right now.” Lacia replied.

“Hmm, yeah I’m totally fucking sure of that. Hacking all the megacorp servers, huh. Avalanche: hacked. Datavis: hacked. Synergon: hacked.” he listed off names as he walked towards her terminal. “Nah you’re playing fucking Starscapers again. Master hacker, my ass.”

“Okay just… keep it down anyway, christ. And what, am I not allowed to play games now? Do I need to be infiltrating some poor fucker’s data all the time?”

“Alright whatever, play Shitscrapers all you want, I’ve got real parties to go to.” Janek said, pulling up a chair “But… check this out first.” he held up a small bag of red and blue pills “I got this new shit that I think you should check out, apparently it’s like having an orgasm and a panic attack at the same time. Comes all the way from Eastern Russia, or what’s left of it at least. Guy I bought it from called it Iced Miracle.”

“C’mon Janek, you know that shit’s probably going to kill you. Or worse, turn you into a vegetable so they can come collect you and carve you up for organs… Or make your eyeballs explode or something. You know that’s what happened to someone down there.”

“Psht, this is nothing like that blackstar or EDRA shit they sling in the subcity. And I’m pretty sure eyeball guy was an urban legend.” Janek said, although now his confidence was laced with a twinge of anxiety. “Anyway, you don’t even have to take anything, just come down to a party once in a while. It’s not like you’re doing anything interesting up here.”

As if in response, a loud crash came from the window, as a strange looking drone slammed through it. Both of them stared out at the large metal device that had smashed the glass and was now sitting, broken and chirping halfway out on the small outside ledge.

Leaping at the device, Lacia pulled it into the room and read the logo on the side of the hull “Avalanche. It’s a megacorp surveillance drone of some kind… although it looks really high end. No rotors, just microrepulsors… it seems to be still working though.”

“Why would they be so careless flying this thing up here?” Janek said, as Lacia popped the outer weatherproof hull off of the machine and grabbed a tablet and some cables from a nearby table.

“No idea, but I think we’re going to find out soon enough.” She said, unscrewing a small module out of the drone at a lightning fast pace. “Throw me that signal jammer blanket in the corner, I’m going to plug some false coords into the GPS to make it look like it crashed into another building.”

Janek was shaking as he scrambled to throw the jammer over the drone. “Holy fuck this is insane, we’re going to get arrested over this aren’t we?”

“Nah, if we hadn’t done this we’d be arrested. This is us covering our asses. GPS is spoofed, somebody is going to be pretty pissed when they don’t find this thing miles away though.”

“Why don’t we just get them to collect this fucking thing? Are you just… going to steal experimental devices from a ridiculously powerful megacorporation on a whim?” Janek asked,

“Hey, it’s not like we were doing anything interesting up here.”