Welcome to the 21st century
Laura was bored and watching the security system of Ice Electric, a fat underground casino owned by megacompany Westguard. A college freshman with years of cutting through the underbog of the internet under her belt, Laura was a prodigy. She'd hacked the Pentagon when she was ten years old, NASA when she was thirteen, and by sixteen she was rerouting satellite trajectories leaving authorities chasing ghosts.
That was all old hat.
Laura wanted more. She wanted to be a journalist. She wanted to tell the stories she'd unearthed, so many stories buried so deep in the data. Thieves and victims, crime and justice. There were so many more stories out there beyond her reach, that the internet's vast claws had never touched. That's why she'd begged her father to let her come here, to Silas University, in Styria, Austria. The old earth was the perfect place to dig up stories buried deep beneath the soil, give her a challenge and a goal. Plus it got her far beyond the reach of her father's overprotective gaze.
If she was being honest, she'd like to be a story herself. She could see it now. young journalist reveals shocking secrets, brings dead crimes to light and life, resolves mysteries left untouched for generations.
But that was all for the future. Right now, Laura needed to get past college. So she'd be a good schoolgirl for a few years, get her credentials.. that was the plan.
Right now the plan was very, very boring
Struggling to think of a journalism project she could feasibly undertake in Silas, Laura had taken to exploring Styria's burgeoning network as a side-hobby. Watching casino cameras wasn't the most fun idea she'd ever had, but it was interesting enough coming up with stories for the rich and gaunt that frequented the red carpets of Ice Electric. Hacking the security system was child's play- Getting out of Silas' ethernet had been a surprisingly unreal challenge, but more on that later.
Laura spotted something interesting in one of the new feeds leading to the casino's underground vaults. She'd almost missed it. A girl moving like smoke blowing through the drab halls, dressed in tight black clothing. Definitely not someone who belonged there. Someone who was very good at sneaking, and very, very fast. Laura jumped from camera feed to camera feed, trying to track this girl. Who was she? What was she doing? She was beating all of the casino's security systems with ease. Laura suspected even the casino's person being paid to watch the cameras had no idea what was going on under his nose.
It was only when the girl stopped in front of the casino's vault door that she finally got a good look at her. Young, cheek bones, dark hair. Laura quickly hacked into the casino's security as the intruder waved some sort of card over a scanner- no doubt pilfered from someone upstairs. The main locks on the door opened, but Laura was just barely fast enough to disable the door mechanisms, shutting down the door's security but causing the backup locks to remain in place.
The girl got a nasty surprise as she tried to pull the door open, confident countenance giving way to confused, then frustrated body language. Laura smirked. Crime stopped, and no doubt justice would be served, thanks to Laura Hollings, teenage prodigy and was that girl pulling the vault door open despite the locks in place?!
It took her some effort but the intruder grinded an opening wide enough for her to slip through. Laura must have messed up somewhere, there's no way that lithe body had the strength to- why wasn't the alarm going off? OH, right. Laura had disabled everything on the door.
Crap.
Laura considered her options as the girl began to stuff money sacks into a dark bag. If she set the alarm off, security might capture the intruder but they'd also probably wonder why the door's security had shut down in the middle of everything. That was going to be bad for Laura, even if she was confident it couldn't be traced back to her. It meant alarms raised. It meant trouble.
If she didn't set the alarm off, then this intruder was going to slip away with a bag full of stolen money. Narrative over, crime accomplished. That... would be very boring. Laura did not like boring. It's the kind of decision her dad would tell her to make- keep out of trouble, mind her own business.
Laura set the alarms off.
The flashing lights startled the girl on Laura's screen, and she looked around in confusion. For just a moment her eyes locked on the camera watching her every move and Laura could swear she felt that woman glaring at her right through the lenses, as if she somehow knew who was responsible for this. Laura bit her lip and watched as the girl grabbed her bag and made for it.
The on-site guards were already at the hallway outside, a group of four men chosen more for their brawn then their brains. Back up and the REAL security was still assembling and rushing downstairs. Laura felt confident that four men could handle one girl, though.
No, no they couldn't. She shoved them aside like rag dolls and knocked all four of them to the floor. She just ran right past them, leaving at least one man down as the other three struggled to get up. Guns were pulled, but the intruder turned a corner and was gone long before firing became an option. They limped after her, but Laura knew they wouldn't catch her.
She managed, somehow, to follow the intruder's retreat to the staircases. She seemed surprised to find the door locked. Looking around her, she found the camera Laura was watching her through and narrowed her eyes. She mouthed something Laura couldn't make out, and then rammed her shoulder into the door, breaking it open, and then she was gone.
Laura couldn't find her on any of the upper floor camera feeds for the rest of the night. It was a big story all over the news that night though- a ghostly waif stealing a king's ransom from the vaults and dissapearing. Laura would have loved to cover it herself.
As she finally retreated to bed for the night, Laura couldn't help but feel like she'd just taken her first few steps into a much larger world than she had ever envisioned.