The owl moved its mouth around not in an imitation of talking and not quite chewing gum. Danival could see a small black device in its beak. The bird blinked slowly at him.

The pain moved like old traincars departing from his head down his spine to all his limbs with each heartbeat. Something fluttered above him and he ducked down. It was an owl. Orange spotted. It wore a vest. Just one button was enough to keep the vest on.

“Yes, my team failed on this initiative,” they’d admit, “through a lapse of clear vision. This application I built is solid. Once we synchronize our key metrics to…” blah blah blah they said in all the right tones executives heard as lullabies.

He did sometimes carry a taser, so at that moment, Danival was convinced it was a taser.
Danival held his hand over his butt pocket. "We got a problem?" He said.
Danival could see the teenager's eyes underneath his goggles glance down. Danival realized he didn't have anything in his pocket.

was covered in tattoos. A mean line of glowing cybernetics up his spine. The kind of body that could bench press Danival.

The skeuomorphisms used to depict cyberspace feels like a shout out to Reboot and I really enjoy that none of it is dwelled on. Yes, this dude grows four extra arms to hack a mainframe. Don't dwell on it