Chapter 3 | Kill()
People are constantly surrounded by computers. Way more than, really, I think anyone realizes. When you've devoted as much time to destroying, building, and infiltrating computers as I have, you tend to develop a skill at finding those hidden processors in the background that make life work. When I stepped onto the elevator that would take me up to the final floor, the floor that held my ultimate prize, I couldn't help but play my subconscious game of seeing just how many there were concealed around me.
The doors closed shut with a pleasant ding, bumping together just after I whisked my happily flicking tail through the gap. That was one computer, controlling the elevator and all its functions. Everything from the echo of muffled saxophone wafting over the speakers, the intermittent blip of each passed floor, and even the lights shining behind the button were all controlled by at least one onboard computer. Hacking into that one wouldn't be too difficult. Just find the building's utilities, and work my way in from there. Floors continued to pass by at an increasing pace, escorting me up to that magic floor 256.
Another computer probably controlled all of the elevator's security and emergency protocols. If one of the cables were to snap, or the lift lost power, that processor would jump in to keep anything catastrophic from occurring, and would automatically alert the authorities. That one would be more difficult to crack, but I bet I could find a way to slip in through the security floor that I'd just left. If I wanted to, I could disable any computerized emergency responses meant to stop the lifts from smashing into the ground, or inhibit security from realizing that an elevator was offline. Disturbing, but true.
I glanced up at the bright green display on the wall that read out the floor I was on. I was going to arrive in a few more seconds. If I had done my job correctly, all of the automated security responses on the floor should have been neutralized, meaning I could stride right on in and start poking around in their servers. If I had missed something, however… between the cameras, turrets, drones, and EMP generators, I'd be knocked flat on my ass instantly, and hauled off to the darkest cell Artec could find. And it would take a lot of cleverness to unstick myself from that mess.
But, truth be told, my concern was just a baseline, healthy skepticism that evolved from working with infuriating technology for a living. I'd seen just about everything in this profession, and I knew that if it could go wrong, it would go wrong. I was great at my job though, and I knew that I had done everything correctly. Probably.
I distracted myself for the remaining time in the lift with my little game, counting each of the computers tucked away in the nooks and crannies of the elevator: in the wifi router installed in the ceiling, in the emergency communicator set into the wall, in the hidden radio transceiver that my custom communicator was detecting, not to mention the ten or twelve I had in my backpack. My exercise was eventually brought to a halt when the speakers dinged aloud, letting me know that I had arrived at my destination.
Thankfully, when the doors finally slid open in front of me, I wasn't pelted with the hail of lead and electricity that my subconscious half-expected. I smirked, striding confidently out into the hallway that was crammed full of every booby trap that Artec's most sadistic engineers could think up. I was met with nothing but sweet silence. I'd disabled all of their sensors, so even though the guns were locked and loaded, and every trip wire was rigged to send special operatives diving through the windows, they were all totally blind, thanks to a bit of clever code.
I wandered the halls for a few more minutes, until I finally found the room that I'd been waiting patiently for all this time. The room that Fara was paying me an exorbitant amount of money to loot. The room that Artec had gone through all this trouble to protect. I grinned, cracking my knuckles and tucking a few locks of hair back behind my ear. Time to really have fun. I stared up at the plaque on the door as I fished around in my pack for the tool I needed to break in.
ARCHIVES
So often, archives were just dumpsters for garbage data that either nobody used, or meant absolutely nothing. Every once in awhile though, if you were lucky enough, you could find a diamond in the rough. Credit card numbers, government ID's, maybe galactic coordinates of secure shipments. But this room held something much more valuable than any of that. I didn't know what it was, and quite frankly, I didn't care. What I did care about was the fact that it would net me enough credits to fill a swimming pool.
After a moment of searching, my hand closed around a molded plastic grip. I yanked it out from my pile of tools, bringing my handheld blowtorch into view. I flicked a switch on the back a few times, sending a shower of sparks tumbling to the floor with each sharp snap of metal on metal. On the third crack, a loud hiss snaked from the end of the torch, quickly followed by a leaping orange and blue flare. The flame shrank after a moment, settling down into a stable, hushed whisper of heat and fire. I chuckled a little. This was one of my favorite tricks.
I brought the flame up to the handle of the door, slowly panning it back and forth, distributing heat evenly across the metal. The handle was dull grey at first, but before long, the metal began to glow dull red. I bit my lip, estimating the timing in my head, feeling out the correct spot on the wall with my free hand, and… With one sharp, fast motion, I brought my fist down, directly over where the mag-locks for the door were stored. Instantly, a hidden light on the door handle flashed bright red. A mechanical clunk sounded inside the wall beneath my hand, and then the door popped open, swinging wide on its hinges. I flicked the blowtorch off, stowing it back in my bag.
Magnetic locks were great in most cases, but they had one glaring flaw. If they overheated, the magnets could fuse with the surrounding metal, permanently sealing the door shut. After a few reports of employees being trapped for hours by a fused mag-lock, Corerian safety standards had mandated that manufacturers build in some way to disengage the lock before catastrophic failure could occur. That meant the magnetic locks in these doors were designed to automatically open if they reached too hot a temperature. This wasn't normally an issue for large vaults where the magnets were hard to reach. In a small door like this however, with a little practice, it didn't take much to make the magnets reach dangerous temperatures. Combine that with a quick knock to the the control box in order to trip the pressure sensors, and it was open sesame. Normally the door would also now call for security, or possibly the fire department, but thankfully, I'd managed to disable the door's emergency calls earlier. Nothing was getting in or out of this floor. Except, hopefully, myself with treasure in hand.
I rose off my knees, brushing the dust off of my pants. I waltzed through the door, perfectly pleased with my clever self. Beyond the magnetic door was a small clean room, housing a few metal lockers, a crate with wires randomly overflowing from its lid, and what I actually needed: a few thin, plastic bodysuits, each with a bulky, black box attached to the back. I pulled one down of its hook, sizing it up to see if it would fit me. I nodded with satisfaction. It would do just fine.
I unbuttoned the blazer I was wearing, along with my blouse and dress pants, folding and stowing them away safely on one of the benches along the walls. I slipped on the bodysuit next, sliding both my arms and legs into the plastic, pulling the hood up over my head and zipping the whole thing up around me. I tested my mobility, bending down a few times and circling my arms at my sides. Satisfied with everything, I shouldered my pack, turning to the second, much thicker entrance set at the back of the room. The airlock. I took in a deep lungful of air, my breath fogging the clear plastic visor set in the front of my hood. I pulled the hatch open, feeling its heavy weight resist movement. The small airlock was dark when I stepped over the threshold, but a bright light clicked on as soon as I was inside.
Anybody with a laptop can tell you that computers get hot. All that electricity moving around, and things are bound to heat up pretty quickly. However, your store brand laptop has nothing on a corporate supercomputer. In the past, people had needed simple cold rooms to dissipate the heat that radiated off of more powerful processors. The better technology gets though, the more waste heat it produces. These days, top-of-the-line supercomputers could inflict third degree burns from more than ten meters away. A little air conditioning wasn't going to stop processors like that from melting themselves into an expensive lump of metal. The atmosphere inside newer cold rooms was pure helium gas, because at the temperatures that computers needed to be cooled, the oxygen and nitrogen in the air would liquify. The air was kept at a precise temperature of 5 degrees above absolute zero. Any lower than that, and the helium would start to condense as well. Any higher, and these supercomputers would burn themselves into sludge.
To put it in simpler terms, everything inside of a cold room is trying to kill you. If the cold doesn't turn you into a popsicle, then you'll suffocate with a very silly, high pitched voice due to the helium. Because of all that, technicians who needed to work in these cold rooms had to wear the special suits that I had just put on. They came with an insulating layer that trapped in heat almost perfectly, keeping its wearer from freezing. They also came with a rebreather to recycle oxygen back into the user's suit. I rolled my shoulders, cracking my neck. They also let you keep relatively good mobility, and they could double in a pinch as a sexy vinyl catsuit if the need arose. That had been a fun night with birdie…
I blinked, bringing myself back to my senses. Now wasn't the time to think about that. Now was the time to kick ass, and get my paycheck. I pressed the blinking button indented in the wall, sealing the two airlock doors in front of and behind me. Gas hissed as it vented into the room, fans whirred inside my suit, and after a moment, the oxygen levels in the room dropped, replaced instead with the super-chilled helium from the server room. Heat was drained from the room, dropping from room temperature steadily down until leveling out only a few degrees away from absolute zero. My suit cracked and constricted against my skin as it weathered the violent temperature drop, but thankfully it held tight even after the system had stabilized.
A loud tone buzzed over the speakers, and with a loud click, the airlock in front of me unlatched. It swung free on its hinges, revealing the expansive server room behind it. I whistled as I stepped out of the airlock. This place was almost as impressive as some of my highest end server rooms. Almost.
The room was the same pearlescent white as the security floor's server room, and the same tile stretched underfoot for yards and yards. I raised one hand up reflexively to block the harsh glare of the light reflecting off their smooth surfaces. Long rows of servers wove across the room, each one about as tall as I was, a mess of blinking lights and twisted cables all locked behind a metallic glass case. There were hundreds of them stretching out as far the eye could see. I let out a short huff of air, my breath again fogging the front of my hood as I shouldered my pack and started pacing through the servers one by one. Even with the thermal suit on, my skin still crawled at the sudden whisks of heat that brushed over the surface of my suit when I stepped too close to one of the racks.
Eventually, I dug up the one server that wasn't going to chargrill my pretty pink fur: the access terminal. I set my pack down in front of it, sizing the rig up momentarily. It was standard fare. There was an embedded keyboard with a simple operating system, displaying a console that would let me query commands to the rest of the system. Next to the monitor was a glittering silver port, useful for running external programs or saved queries off a hard drive. I stepped up to the keyboard, pulling it out of the case and waking the system up. The screen flashed once before displaying a simple black screen with white text, and a blinking input bar awaiting my command. I typed in a few keystrokes, my ear flicking in annoyance when the suit's gloves accidentally made me enter a few letters incorrectly. Eventually I acclimated to the awkward impediment however, and managed to type out a simple help -version query into the console. I smiled at the computer's response.
AR-QUERY v.1.5.34
This was good news. The Ar-Query software was a popular choice for interfacing with powerful databases because of how agile it was. It was one of the few programs available that had been specially designed to operate with supercomputers of this scale. Version 34 of the software had been used almost everywhere, and version 35 had only been released within the last couple weeks. There weren't many huge changes in it, but one thing that had been patched was a teensy bug related to network address checking. A teensy bug that I was going to use to bring this system to its knees.
I fished around in my backpack, shuffling through various odds and ends until my fingers closed around a small, unassuming piece of plastic buried at the very bottom. I pulled it out of the bag, holding it up in front of me and admiring its simple, sleek design. It was a jet black flash drive, with a muted pink stripe painted around the top, and a calligraphic M swirling around the body. I turned it over in my hand, my smile growing at the simple word engraved in it. BOMB.
I snapped it into the terminal's port, watching it think for a second before displaying the drive's single item on the side of the screen, a program that would arm and detonate the bomb. It wasn't any old explosive, however. No, this was more sophisticated. With a snicker, I opened the unassuming program, and hit run.
The entire system froze.
It's kind of hard to wrap your head around just how difficult it is to make a supercomputer crash. These systems are designed to be bulletproof, and devising a program powerful enough to overwhelm them is a daunting task. Often, a program that would reduce a lesser computer to a twitching mess could be gobbled up by these machines without breaking a sweat. There's always something to be said for returning to basics however, and that's exactly what exploiting this particular glitch did. Pride swelled in my chest as the supercomputer stuttered and jerked more and more, putting up a fight against my infection to the bitter end.
This particular exploit was based on one of the first viruses I'd ever built, when I was still learning with the Hot Rodders. My mentor back then had showed me how to overwhelm a computer with an exponential bomb like the one I was using now. They worked by inserting an innocuous command into the computer, but at some point while it was running, it would call the same command two more times. Then those two commands would each call two more commands, and two more commands, and so on. The number of active commands would double at every step, until the rig ran out of available memory and collapsed under the sheer weight. Ar-Query had a subroutine that checked for endless recursive behavior like this, and usually managed to put a stop to it before it could get out of hand. However, that one little bug in version 34 of the software didn't properly apply this bounds checking to network addresses. If you fed in an address that then linked to two other addresses, and then two more addresses, you could bring the whole system to its knees, tied up in an ever expanding rope of intersecting and recursive networking.
A few seconds after I lit the bomb's fuse, it detonated.
The high pitched whirr of the machine spun down into a feeble groan as its failsafe cut power to the rig. The screen popped, and soon, it was only black. I rocked back on my heels, my tail flicking inside the suit with glee. The supercomputer rebooted into an administrative, troubleshooting mode, and by the time I pulled out my laptop, it greeted me with its default message, pleading for help.
FATAL SYSTEM CRASH
REBOOTING IN DEBUG MODE…
AR-QUERY INITIALIZING...
EXTERNAL DRIVES RECONFIGURING…
PLEASE CONNECT DIAGNOSTIC MACHINE
That last line was my queue. I flipped open the lid of my laptop, sliding a cable into the side of my computer with deft fingers. I attached the other end to supercomputer's shiny silver port, establishing my laptop as the "diagnostic machine" that would, ostensibly, help figure out what had gone wrong with Artec's archives. Of course, that was little more than a ruse. In reality, my laptop would hijack the entire system through this admin connection. Once that was set up, it would just be a simple matter of finding Fara's data, downloading it, and walking right back out into the sunny Cornerian day. Easy like Sunday morning, right?
Artec's computer accepted my fake connection without a second thought, trusting the front I was presenting as an official Artec representative. The rig went through a few more steps in the recovery process, but before too long, I was presented with the treasure map I'd been searching for. Artec's mainframe offered me a list of every server in the room, each one clearly labeled and diagrammed for my convenience. I couldn't help but let out a relieved chuckle, my fingers clenching in delight. I had done it. I was here. I had made it past all the obstacles. I had gone head-to-head with the best that Artec could throw at me, and I had won. I clicked on the first server in the top left of my screen, and quickly scanned over the list of the machine's contents. Nothing interesting there, mostly just subprocesses to help route the company's messages around the system, but I knew that it was only a matter of time now.
The next machine was a bit more interesting. I found a database full of what appeared to be liabilities for the firm, but not in the typical sense of owing money to a few government agencies. It was a compiled list of corners the company had cut during the construction of various warships for the Cornerian army, the likelihood of them being discovered, and contingency plans for how to shift blame in case they were discovered. I noted some of the more tantalizing entries in the table, but then closed it and resumed my search for the real golden goose. I'd seen enough corruption in my time as a hacker. It'd take more than that to get my attention.
I sat on the floor searching through Artec's archives, finding plenty of juicy tidbits, but the data I wanted remained elusive and out of reach. My nose wrinkled in distaste. Where could it be? Was I missing something? Was I just getting unlucky? I was keenly aware that, every second I spent searching was another second that I could be uncovered by a random search. I fidgeted my legs unhappily underneath me as yet another server turned up nothing more than some potential blackmail material. A pit was growing in my stomach, and I had learned that going with my gut usually kept me alive in this business. I decided to ignore it, however. I was so close to the finish line. I swallowed the bile in my throat and pressed on, despite my internal clamoring.
That was a mistake.
I double clicked on the next server, hovering my mouse over it before letting my gloved finger press my laptop's track pad. Usually, a small scrollable list would pop up on my screen once I'd done that, but this time, nothing happened. The corner of my mouth twitched downwards. I repeated my input again, thinking maybe I had simply misclicked. But again, the system was unresponsive. My brow furrowed, the butterflies in my stomach slowly starting to churn with paranoia. I clicked over into another application that was running in the background, but that one was clicking along just fine. So it wasn't my computer that was acting up. It was the connection itself.
I opened up my connections manager, just to make sure that nothing out of the ordinary was connected to my computer. I saw the connection to my orbital servers, the connection into Artec's network, and the connection over the cable into Artec's supercomptuer. However, there was another bridge there that I didn't understand, one pointing back to one of my resource servers that was housed under a foot of Fichinan snow. I wasn't using that server right now… So why was it connected to my rig?
It was then that one of my ears flicked inside my suit. It was just a subtle noise, a slight distortion in the usual grind of the circulatory fans that moved helium around the room. I had spent a lot of time in supercomputer cold rooms though, where even the slightest malfunction could result in catastrophic failure. I instinctively swiveled around, searching for the source of the noise.
That was when my heart slammed to a halt.
I barely had time to throw my body around the corner of the server array when a tidal wave of fiery heat blasted down the hall I'd just been sitting in. I hit the floor with a grunt, scrambling up onto my feet and backing away from the lethal blaze that had just scoured the hallway clean. The servers that had previously surrounded me had been reduced to a slurry of dull, glowing metal. Blue sparks cracked and hissed and arced across the space. My breath came in rapid, horrified pants. If I had waited just a second longer to spring to my feet, I would've been incinerated right where I stood, reduced to ashes by the overwhelming conflagration that had just screamed past.
Even while I was still physically reeling from the close call, my brain already knew exactly what had happened. My eyes whipped around to the end of my new hallway, and sure enough, I caught a glimpse of the machinery responsible. The circulator was green all the way across the board… Except for the one glaring red dot in front of the now-melted array. Somehow, the ventilation for that row had switched off, and in a cascade of sudden failure, a front of waste heat that was easily several thousand degrees hot had vaporized everything in its path.
My head snapped behind me when I heard the same faint, distorted sound as before, a low whine and a deep rumbling. But this time, I was ready. My legs sprang out from underneath me as I leapt down another hallway. Over my shoulder, a second barrage of cleansing fire tore down directly where I had just been standing. I pulled myself into a fast roll when I hit the ground, but this time, I didn't stop to stare. The instant I was on my feet again, I put my head down and sprinted for the end of the row. My feet crashed against the tile underfoot. My breath was fast in my ears, but that didn't inhibit me from hearing another groan of combustion behind me. I gritted my teeth, just barely slipping around the next corner before the wave of superheated air slammed past me. It scorched the hallway and sent a wash of searing heat over me, even managing to pierce the nearly perfect insulation of my suit. I raised one arm to block the rush from hitting my face, but I still felt the pinpricks of intense heat scrape over my fur and skin. I was breathing quickly, but my legs were still bent, and my ears were still peeled for the next attack from any direction.
However, the next sound I heard wasn't another machinery failure. It was the sound of static hissing over a PA, followed by a screechy voice that made my eyes go wide with recognition. My fists clenched when she spoke, as all the pieces began to fall into place.
"Nowhere left to run, Katt!" the voice spat at me, not bothering to hide the seething hatred in her voice. A stream of curses left my lips, but my body was on autopilot, even as my brain was now absorbed in anguish at the female voice in the speaker system. My laptop had been liquified in that first blast, so instead, my hand undid the strap that was holding my phone in place on my pack. I brought it out and quickly punched in the code to unlock it, holding it at the ready in my off hand. I dumped the rest of the bag at my feet. Its contents were only going to slow me down now.
"I'm going to burn you to a crisp, and I'm going to enjoy it," the voice said once more, her words dripping with sadism. I knew exactly who this was. I also knew I had walked right into her trap. The sick bastard on the other end of that speaker was a hacker who went by the name Retr0, but her real name was Haley. A long, long time ago… well, let's just say we got off to a bad start. Some people hired me to build them a new tool, and that instrument had caused one of Haley's friends to die. She'd loathed me ever since then, and her incessant pestering didn't make me like her much more. Artec must've hired her onto their security team, because even if she wasn't as good as me, she was a relatively close second. I should've realized that she was the hacker I was facing down in the lobby. Only Haley could've known my system that well. Now, I was sealed in a room where everything both wanted to and was capable of ending me. Including the system admin.
"Killed by a computer," Haley growled, her voice crackled over the speakers. Behind me, I heard a mechanical pop in one of the servers, but it didn't resemble the sound made before a wave of heat. I whirled around, bringing myself face to face with an otherwise innocuous computer. "That seems like a pretty ironic death to me," she finished. I backpedaled a few quick steps away from the server that had just let out the alarming noise, but I wasn't quick enough. A piercing bang drilled into my ears, and with a flash of electricity, the server overloaded, letting out a sizeable shockwave in the process. The blast knocked me off balance, throwing me backwards until my head slammed against the metal corner of another server. Stars danced in my vision, and I couldn't help but let out a short cry at the piercing pain. A hand ran to the back of my head, but through the gloves and my hood, it couldn't do much to abate the pounding in my skull.
I blinked a few times, my eyes slowly refocusing on the scene in front of me. My head swam, and my thoughts tied themselves in knots. However, lucidity returned, accompanied the rush of adrenaline that spiked in my veins when that familiar, chilling whine sounded to my right. I stumbled in the only direction I could without getting barbequed, and felt another singeing rush of heat as the ventilation gave out beside me. The prickling pain of the temperature cleared my thoughts, and when I glanced around myself, I realized what Haley's play was. She had me cornered on all side by sparking, superheated metallic sludge, and now, all she had to do was pull the pin on my escape route to finish me for good.
I put my head down and booked it as quickly down the row as I could. My heart thundered in my chest, and the nerves up and down my spine were singing with tension. Dead ahead of me, I saw the circulator sputter and then die as Haley went for the killing blow. I gritted my teeth, doubling down on my sprint, but I knew it wasn't going to be enough. The atmosphere in the distance was already rippling and distorting with heat waves, and the column of torrid air was already almost on top of me. I wasn't going to make it in time.
I skidded to a halt, my lips pressed in a determined, thin line. My legs bent at the knees, and I positioned myself up on my toes, ready to pounce. The heat wave was bearing down on me now. And if I couldn't make through the front exit in time, then the only out… was up. With one fluid motion, I sprang off the floor, quickly hooking a leg around the top of one of the servers I was standing next to. The searing metal burned my hands and legs wherever they came in contact with each other, but thankfully, the suit could prevent burns as long as I didn't touch the rig for too long. I hauled myself over the brink, biting my tongue through the pain in my extremities, letting out a short breath of relief when the wall of boiling air slammed past, just a few inches underneath me. I landed gracefully on my feet in the next row over, already rushing for the next aisle.
As I ran, arms and legs pounding in unison, a furious growl erupted over the speakers. I made it to the next intersection just in time to hop out of the way of another barrage, and Haley's voice followed soon after. "Why can't you ever make things easy? I'll burn down this entire damn building if I have to!" she screamed, her voice charged with fury. "You can't run forever! And the minute you slip up, I'll make sure you rot." I hated to say it, but she was right. My breathing came in heavier, faster pants now, and I could feel my strength diminishing with every leap, every close call just a little more razor-thin than the last. The rebreather on this suit wasn't designed to recycle oxygen as quickly as I was using it up. It was meant for a person sitting perfectly still at a computer, not a person sprinting for their life. I was using my air faster than I could regenerate it. Which meant that if Haley didn't fry me, I'd poison my own atmosphere with carbon dioxide until I suffocated.
Either way, I was looking kind of screwed.
I ducked into another hall of servers to dodge Haley's next ventilation failure. My muscles were starting to spasm and lock up. My vision was going dark at the edges. Haley was forcing me deeper and deeper into her maze of computers, and I was running out of real estate in my retreat. And I still didn't know how I was going to get out of this one. Haley's shouting grew harsher and louder the further our chase went on, her attacks coming faster and faster until I could barely keep up. And that was when it happened.
Another whine came from behind me as I limped down the one of the last hallways that was still intact. I could barely hear it through the ringing in my ears. I couldn't even muster up the coherence to let out a strained groan as I forced myself towards the safety of the corner. Just one more step, I told myself. Just one more step. And as soon as I had planted that last step around the corner… my legs gave out underneath me. I barely felt it when I hit the ground. Colors and the impending darkness of unconsciousness swirled in my vision. My breath was shallow. But the battering ram of heat was still approaching. I didn't manage to crawl out of the way in time.
A ripping, piercing dagger slashed through the fog of my mind when the column of air blasted past me, glancing across an exposed section of my back. I've never felt such visceral pain in my life. I let out a blood curdling scream as the heat ripped up skin and flesh on my vulnerable side, searing and charring it with indiscretion. The suit didn't tear under the heat, but the plastic shell melted into my fur, becoming a bubbling layer fused to my bare, burned skin. The pain consumed my entire mind, tears squeezing out of my clenched eyes as I tried to beat back the waves of nausea and agony. I curled into a tight ball on the floor.
Through the excruciating torment, I could still hear Haley's voice over the speakers, smug with victory. "I've finally caught you," she started, her words shredding into my ears. "After all these years chasing you, I've got you right where I want you: whimpering, crying, and begging for mercy. You're going to die like this. Too pathetic to even fight back." She spat every words with venom. My brain was screaming at me to get up, to fight back against the pain tooth and nail, not to give up. I tried to get my arm underneath me, but even that small motion sent a rending pain down my side. In the distance, through the darkness of my vision, I saw birdie of all people, his beak contorted as he yelled at me to get on my feet. I tried again, for him, but even still, I couldn't stifle a tortured cry at every maneuver. The pain was unbearable.
"I looked up to you, once," Haley continued. It seemed like it was miles away as lucidity ebbed from my mind, but I still heard the distinctive groan of Haley tampering with the ventilation system at the end of the row. My seconds were numbered. "When you and I were just starting out, I thought you were the coolest person alive. I didn't know that my idol was a monster back then. I'm smarter now. I realized that you were only ever interested in yourself. You didn't care who you had to hurt in order to get your way. I'm putting an end to that, right here, right now." With a burst of effort, and an agonizing scream, I managed to push myself up onto one hand, my back and arms shaking wildly with exertion. I snarled against the looming darkness, clawing at it, tearing at it. But every time I thought I'd beaten it, the wound on my back reasserted itself, crushing my feeble resistance. This would be my last chance. Up on one shaking arm already, I tried to move my second out for extra support. It slid haltingly underneath me, dragging across the floor as every twitch of my back muscles sent fresh convulsions raking up my spine.
But just when I had my second arm in place, I gave out.
My chest and skull hit the ground with a thud. I didn't move. I didn't twitch. I was beaten. Haley sighed over the speaker, eventually speaking with disdain. "You're a disgrace. You can't even face your own death with dignity." The whine grew louder as she prepared to cut the line. "This is for what you did to Ruby, bitch." I closed my eyes, awaiting my fate. The whine grew louder and louder in my ears. And then, finally, Haley hit the kill switch. I relaxed my form, ready for the end.
...But nothing happened.
Haley hit the switch once more. But again, the ventilation continued. I could hear her tap it frantically a few more times, each time more loudly than the last. "No, no, no, no…" she muttered to herself as she checked her system. And that was when she gasped. "No! No!" she screamed. Her words were fearful, and furious. Haley glanced at her camera feed, and out of the corner of her eye, she saw something that she had missed before. A small, lopsided grin on my face.
"What did you do?!" she shrieked over the system. I saw a green light glow on a different security camera, showing Haley had changed her feed to a different angle. That was when she let out a long, enraged cry. In my off hand, hidden by my curled up body, was my phone. My grin grew wider as, shakily, I pushed myself up onto my hands and knees, eventually bringing myself into a sitting position. The pain was still brutal in my side, but I fought through it. I brought myself to my feet, having to hold onto a safety rail for balance, even as Haley continued to scream expletives over the PA. There was nothing she could do about it though.
Haley was good, but she'd gotten sloppy. Of all the things that had brought her down, it was her connection to the speaker system that hadn't been properly secured. I'd managed to use that to track her back to her home setup, and had even found a login and password improperly stored on the announcement network. From there, I'd just had to lock her out of her system, changing enough passwords and authentication codes that she wasn't going to be able to unlock her computer any time soon.
In other words, I'd just trounced this wannabe, even when she had me on the ropes.
Haley continued to yell in frustration as she watched me pick up a pair of bolt cutter from a tool station nearby, and walk towards an innocuous drive bank nearby, powerless to stop me. I'd realized a while back this was the one row that Haley had been avoiding melting, probably to try and save whatever was in it. I'd also realized that, for some reason, I hadn't found Fara's file on any server connected to the network. Put those two things together, and I'd deduced that Fara's data was probably stored in an offline storage rack in this aisle. Sure enough, when I cut the lock off of the locker, I found a single data sphere inside. Once I connected my phone to it, I found exactly what I'd come here looking for.
Haley was practically howling in pure hatred as I unceremoniously ripped the data sphere from its dock. It felt heavy in my fingers, and I couldn't help but grin when I saw my distinctive, calligraphic M imprinted on the back of the sphere. I held it up to the nearest camera, looking Haley straight in the eye.
"Maybe I do look out for myself. But you know what?" I announced, loudly enough to make sure she was hearing every word of what I had to say to her. "I do it so much better than you'll ever be able to. Katt Monroe is, and always will be, the best."
/
Epilogue | RoomService()
Fara groaned at the sound of her phone ringing on her bedside table. She took a pillow and tried to cover her rather large ears with it, but with her sensitive hearing, it did little to block out the soul-crushingly annoying chime of her phone.
Next to the fennec, her husband Bonny stirred, letting out a rather undignified grunt for the high standard he usually held his conduct to. It was hard to blame him though. This was the fifth night this week that her phone had woken the both of them up in the middle of the night. And she had a feeling she knew exactly what she was going to hear at the end of line when she picked up.
"Sorry Bonny," she mumbled, getting a groan of sympathy from the fox. "I swear, if this is about who I think it is, I'm going to fly out to Meteo personally and kill her." Fara fumbled for the communicator next to her, having to flip on a lamp and put on her reading glasses to see where she was reaching. Fara didn't pick up her usual silver, wireless communicator however. No, her very official, very daunting looking red, corded phone was ringing. That line was saved for official Phoenix Corp emergencies, like a major ship collision, or wartime conditions at a mining plant… or an executive data breach.
Fara rubbed her eyes as she picked up the phone. "What?" she asked, no small amount of hostility in her voice. She could tell the person at the other end of the line was trembling, his nerves shot.
"S-Sorry to bother you, ma'am, but… There's been another p-password crack," he jumbled out, eventually managing to get out a full sentence. "A hacker managed to break in and s-steal your p-passcode."
Fara let out a long, harsh sigh, pinching the bridge of her nose between her fingertips. Bonny stirred again at the noise, and she comforted him back to sleep with her other hand. "Was it Katt again?"
"We believe so, yes," he stammered. "Should we launch an investigation and press charges?"
Fara let out a loud, unabashed pissed off growl. "How? How the hell can she know?!" she yelled, hearing a frightened yip from the other end of the line. This was Katt's way of getting back at her for the mission, she knew that, but right now, she wanted to get her hands around that feline's throat and finish the job Haley had started. "Of course we shouldn't," she said sharply. Not only was Fara sure that Katt hadn't left a trace, but she was also sure that Katt would release all manner of blackmail she'd found if Phoenix Corp tried anything like it. She loved Katt for how crafty she was. But she also hated her for it.
"Fine, whatever, just change the code and send it to me in the morning." Fara was about to hang up, but the employee's voice came once more over the phone, hurriedly.
"A-Actually, there's one more thing… Um..." he said, hesitating. Fara lett out a short huff, impatient.
"Well? Out with it!" she barked.
"W-Well, the hacker, she um… she appears to have purchased a vacation for herself using your corporate account."
Fara was silent on her end of the phone for a long minute. Eventually, she spoke into the receiver again, her voice a whisper, flat and level. "For how long, and how much?"
The employee gulped. "About five weeks, and... about half a million credits."
Bonny, along with the rest of the apartment building, shot up in bed in a heart-stopping panic at the infamous, ear-piercing scream that Fara Phoenix loosed that night.
/
A/N: Look at that! I actually finally managed to finish a multi-chapter story! I'm just as surprised as you are, I didn't think it was possible. And yet, here it is! I hope you guys liked it, because I had a lot of fun writing it. Katt is a great character, and more people should use her in new and interesting roles! And don't fret if you like Hacker Katt and want more of her, she'll be back before you know it in Brace for Impact! Speaking of, this is canonical to Brace for Impact's universe, so see if you can find any interesting hints for over in that story… :)
Anyway, thanks a million to Furfur for helping me every step along the way with this. He stood by me from the very beginning of this all the way to the very end of it. Thanks buddy, I never would've been able to do this without you! Also, Bonny is totally his character, and you should go read his stuff, because Fara and Bonny are absolutely wonderful together in his writing.
That about wraps it up! Hope you guys liked it, and hopefully I'll have something else out for you guys soon. Happy holidays!