.Hack//Heist
A .Hack fanfiction by Renfro Calhoun
Disclaimer: I claim ownership of nothing at all related to Project .Hack. Which is a shame, because I really like money and I'm pretty sure they're making a big pile of it. C'mon, Bandai, share the love! And by love, I mean money.
Notes: Takes place between Infection and Mutation. Parentheses indicate thoughts. Warren Spector is a god amongst men. A god, I say.
Chapter IX - Defragment
------------
"Haaaaaah!"
Stolls grunted as he launched into a diving roll away from Tamon, narrowly dodging the ornate, deadly-looking spear which he wielded. The Wave Master quickly stood up and brought up his wand, ready to block, when a swing from behind interrupted Tamon; he spun on his heels and blocked an overhead swing from BlackRose with the shaft of the spear.
The Heavy Blade smirked. "Remember me?!" she yelled, lifting her weapon away from the parry as Kite joined the fray, blades flying.
Stolls watched as Tamon simultaneously dueled Kite and BlackRose, deflecting both of their attacks, his spear wildly bouncing back and forth between the fighters. Six consecutive swings were blocked before Tamon could get the upper hand, dashing outside of the two-pronged attack and drawing his spear in a wide arc to his right, striking BlackRose's back and throwing her off-balance; what little armor she wore served her nonetheless, as the edge of the spear failed to more than scratch the metal plate.
Kite quickly lunged forward to continue the assault, drawing both blades before him in simultaneous wide hooking motions, lunging out at Tamon and quickly drawing them back; a loud *CLANG* echoed through the empty white confines as metal met metal, Tamon visibly rattled by the attack.
Strafing wide to his right, Stolls found an opening and raised his wand, pointing towards Tamon; one shouted chant and less than a second later, several dozen small flames appeared in a sphere around Tamon, and instantly converged, combining their energies into a massive explosion. Tamon was blown off his feet and backwards, and he landed on the 'ground' with a weighty thud.
He recovered just in time to roll away from a leaping slash by BlackRose, her head cleaving the air where his neck had been just milliseconds earlier. Pressing the attack, she dove forward, leading Tamon's dodge and scoring a powerful crossing slash to his chest as he struggled to stand.
Stolls threw his arm to his right, chanting even louder as he kept his wand trained on Tamon; a stream of fire lurched forth from its tip and spilled onto the floor, forming a fast-moving wall of fire which raced for the prone Long Arm.
Tamon almost dodged the attack, the flames colliding with his leg as he stood and dashed to one side. Shrugging off the damage, he brought his spear around to BlackRose, only to find it pinned between a pair of crossed short swords.
Half-shouting, half-exhaling, Kite pulled his wrists apart, using the blades as leverage to rip the spear out of Tamon's hands. The Twin Blade followed through by thrusting both weapons straight at the now-defenseless Tamon, impaling him through the stomach and embedding both blades deep inside him.
Caught slightly off guard by the sensation of stabbing through digital flesh, Kite released his blades and stepped back; mild shock changed to growing confusion when he noticed the complete lack of expression on Tamon's face.
"Critical damage detected," said the voices, Tamon's lips remaining perfectly still. "Engaging primary defen-" the voices were cut off as a large sword cleaved the tanned, blue-clad Long Arm in two at the waist, splitting the torso and legs, which crumpled to the floor and lay completely still.
Stolls let out a long, fatigue-induced sigh. He felt at least an hour older, though he knew it couldn't have been more than a couple minutes. A slight shiver came over him as he stared at the mutilated corpse of the Long Arm; slowly it lost all color, fading to shades of gray before stretching into the air and vanishing completely from sight, a slight hiss the only accompaniment to its' destruction.
He hung his head, a few silver locks drifting down over his eyes, still gazing at the spot formerly occupied by Tamon. For a moment, he was reminded of the incident they had researched prior to entering The World - one involving the player Tsukasa. As he understood it, the player's recovery from her coma coincided with an event in the game, one in which Tsukasa was directly involved. His instincts alone drew him to the logical conclusion.
"In pace requiescat," he muttered softly.
"Is he... dead?" asked Kite, no small amount of hesitation in his voice.
"I don't know," answered Stolls, unsure of whom Kite was referring to.
Sheathing her blade, BlackRose glanced over at Stolls. "If Delphi could possess the character... I don't think it's gone just yet."
Briefly coming back to himself, the Wave Master shook his head, derailing his train of thought. "You're right. We should get out of here," he said, turning to his companions. "God only knows whether the Admins have figured out we're here or not. Shin, what's the word?"
Shinji's voice spoke directly to Stolls' player, appearing to come from the empty white void. "Yeah, I got everything. Have them both log out; I'll set up a chatroom so we can go over these out of The World. Tell them to look for Alias; I'm locking it with the word Origin."
Stolls nodded. "Let's get out of here. You guys got chat plug-ins?" He waited for the expected nods before continuing. "Good. Log out and meet us at #Alias. We'll dig through this stuff together. Password's Origin."
The white nothingness fell from around him, replaced with a black nothingness as he issued the log-off command. Slowly his senses came around from psychological neglect, reminding him that he was playing a game, that he was attached to a computer via headset and goggles, which he quickly set about removing.
The first thing to greet him was a distant skyscraper, lights shining brightly from the visible portion of downtown through the window; no sooner had he caught sight of his real surroundings than a whispering Shin cursed in Japanese. Dean blinked and threw the hacker a look. "What is it?" he asked, taking note of the wide eyes and slack jaw that now decorated his otherwise nondescript facial features.
A large text file reflected off Shinji's glasses; turning his attention to the screen, Dean scanned the title, his expression quickly mirroring Shinji's.
"Project Delphi"
-
*Kite has joined #Alias*
Kite: Hello?
BlackRose: Hey, Kite!
Deisart: Good, everyone's here. All right, there's no real way to sugarcoat this; we've got bad news, and we've got really bad news.
Shinji glanced over at Dean from his chair. "You sure we should tell them all this?"
Dean nodded, sitting down on the bed as Shinji typed. "We brought them into this; they deserve to know. And I think they're the only ones who can help us now."
Kite: What's the bad news?
Deisart: The bad news is, the files we got... weren't what they told us they were.
Kite: What do you mean?
BlackRose: What were they?
Deisart: We were told this was accounting data. Long story short, the title of the first file was "Project Delphi."
Kite: Delphi??? That thing?
BlackRose: No way!
Kite: What did it say?
Deisart: Hang on, I'll C&P
The bed creaked slightly as Dean shifted his weight, watching the words as they appeared on the screen, visibly ill at ease as he read the sentences they formed again.
Deisart: "Summary: An amalgam of digital entities, an ICE (Intrusion Countermeasure Electronics) unit is an automatic response system which acts independent of the user to defend a file, drive or server from hostile intruders. ICE recognizes over 22,000,000 known virus types, and - using advanced pattern-matching algorithms - is fully capable of identifying hacker penetration, adjusting its response to uniquely combat the attack, and even preemptively strike known hostile entities."
Deisart: "Date of Inception: 7/31/2008. Postmortem: Prototype units deemed unreliable following incident 24b-09. Funding withdrawn, project discontinued 9/16/2008."
Kite: Discontinued?
Deisart: Some sort of accident; apparently, a trial run caused Delphi to identify and aggressively attack the programmer who tested it, even outside of the experiment. Delphi managed to break into The World through the backdoor on Delta server, and the programmer, who also served as one of The World's Admins, was attacked in the game by Delphi. He fell into a coma and died six weeks later.
BlackRose: It killed him??
Deisart: Yes. It wasn't designed to function in a virtual environment such as The World, though; its means of defense was through the rewriting of data - usually crippling the targeted software, and occasionally to the point where Delphi could take control of viruses, or the software of invading hackers.
Kite: That sounds a lot like Data Drain...
Deisart: Indeed. One other thing I found was that the company has a record of this programmer being contacted by another company, one of their chief rivals at the time.
A *snap* came from behind; Shinji turned around to face Dean, his eyes wide in revelation. "That's it," he said. "It's all about security."
"What do you mean?"
Dean frowned. "You said earlier tonight that Altimit was nearly unbeatable, as far as operating systems go; that's why straightforward hacking into CC's mainframe wouldn't work. Asara, Rosenberg... they want Delphi, that's what this is about. Same thing with the other company; they wanted a security system that would ensure their OS could compete."
Shinji visibly flinched, his eyes hardening behind his glasses. "Right... or maybe they wanted a weapon. I mean, if Delphi can attack people - real people - through The World..."
"Cyber Connect would be finished," said Dean. "And maybe Altimit with them. Hell, it'd be like the Pluto Kiss all over again."
Suddenly, Dean rose from the bed, throwing a stern look at the hacker. "Shin, keep talking to Kite and BlackRose. Tell 'em everything... especially the really bad news." He paused to take a deep breath, and released it slowly in a vain attempt to keep his calm. "I'm going to make a phone call."
Spinning on his heels, Dean purposefully strode through the bedroom door and into the living room/kitchenette, where a cordless phone rested calmly on a wall-mounted recharger.
He didn't get far; three steps into the room, the phone rang, a shrill, electronic pulse set to a machine gun beat. Dean started for a moment, the detective in him already starting to fidget and shiver nervously. Steadying himself, he picked up the phone and pressed the call button. "Hello?" he greeted the caller weakly, his basic grasp of Japanese slipping from his mind.
A second's pause. With more control over his voice, he repeated the greeting. "Who is this?" he added, listening hard for any sign of life on the other line.
A single voice: noticeable Japanese accent, smug and confident, yet subdued and controlled. "You're a bad man, Mr. Stollis."
Dean's eyebrows fused themselves together, a growing rage and fear battling in his gut. "Chino," he said, his soft voice belying his thoughts.
He swore he heard the thug grin. "Ken, actually," said the caller with a chuckle. "But I'm glad you still remember me."
Dean sighed amidst his answer. "Let's cut the crap, Ken. We've got the details about your little pet A.I. Records of your so-called security system killing one of your own employees. Proof that it's running amok in The World."
"You don't have shit," said Ken. "You were a cop; you really think stolen evidence would hold up in court?"
Dean faltered for a moment, but held his ground. "Have you thought for a moment about what this could do to you if we sold it to Asara? Think what just one copy of Delphi could do to your little game, to their players. Now I ask you: you really think nobody's going to notice the connection between the six or so coma cases related to The World?" He paused, lowering his voice a notch to a more threatening tone, fighting down the tremble from his pounding heart. "How about six hundred? Six thousand? Sixty thousand, maybe?"
Ken audibly faltered for a moment, but recovered just as quickly. "Let's be realistic, Stollis; you're bent, not evil. You wouldn't dare hand it over to another company if you really thought that was going to happen."
Thinking quickly, Dean waited for a pair of seconds before replying. "You're right... although in truth, we were thinking of dropping this off at the nearest news station."
Ken fell silent; Dean took that as a cue to continue, calming down as he felt more in control. "Things like sources and facts rarely get in the way of a good story. I think a lot of people would be very interested to hear that the geniuses behind The World were sitting on a digital weapon of mass destruction."
"So what do you say, Ken?" asked Dean. "Feel like saving your job tonight?"
Several seconds of pause followed. Dean crooked an eyebrow, the chill of doubt and anxiety gripping his inner self once more. "Ken?"
"As a matter of fact," came the reply, a raspy near-whisper, "I do."
Before Dean could speak again, the line clicked and went dead, eliciting a puzzled stare from Dean as he pulled the receiver away from his ear. "Huh?" he muttered, gazing at the phone as if it were to spring to life at any moment. He was about to call for Shinji when a faint, repeated thumping caught his ears.
Slowly setting the receiver down, he strained to listen, each sound he made seemingly magnified by the sudden silence which snaked around him. The noise came again, drawing closer with each thump, seeming to come from beyond the door.
Something pounded against the door, startling Dean. Shinji's voice came immediately from the bedroom. "What was that?"
More thumping, faster and retreating from the door; it triggered in Dean's mind that the noises were footsteps, and with this revelation came several more. Fear made him dash for his leather jacket, still slung over the lounge chair; alarm and instinct picked through the pocket and produced the 9mm pistol he'd taken from Ken, sans silencer.
"Shinji!" he screamed. "Take cover!"
- End of Chapter IX
A .Hack fanfiction by Renfro Calhoun
Disclaimer: I claim ownership of nothing at all related to Project .Hack. Which is a shame, because I really like money and I'm pretty sure they're making a big pile of it. C'mon, Bandai, share the love! And by love, I mean money.
Notes: Takes place between Infection and Mutation. Parentheses indicate thoughts. Warren Spector is a god amongst men. A god, I say.
Chapter IX - Defragment
------------
"Haaaaaah!"
Stolls grunted as he launched into a diving roll away from Tamon, narrowly dodging the ornate, deadly-looking spear which he wielded. The Wave Master quickly stood up and brought up his wand, ready to block, when a swing from behind interrupted Tamon; he spun on his heels and blocked an overhead swing from BlackRose with the shaft of the spear.
The Heavy Blade smirked. "Remember me?!" she yelled, lifting her weapon away from the parry as Kite joined the fray, blades flying.
Stolls watched as Tamon simultaneously dueled Kite and BlackRose, deflecting both of their attacks, his spear wildly bouncing back and forth between the fighters. Six consecutive swings were blocked before Tamon could get the upper hand, dashing outside of the two-pronged attack and drawing his spear in a wide arc to his right, striking BlackRose's back and throwing her off-balance; what little armor she wore served her nonetheless, as the edge of the spear failed to more than scratch the metal plate.
Kite quickly lunged forward to continue the assault, drawing both blades before him in simultaneous wide hooking motions, lunging out at Tamon and quickly drawing them back; a loud *CLANG* echoed through the empty white confines as metal met metal, Tamon visibly rattled by the attack.
Strafing wide to his right, Stolls found an opening and raised his wand, pointing towards Tamon; one shouted chant and less than a second later, several dozen small flames appeared in a sphere around Tamon, and instantly converged, combining their energies into a massive explosion. Tamon was blown off his feet and backwards, and he landed on the 'ground' with a weighty thud.
He recovered just in time to roll away from a leaping slash by BlackRose, her head cleaving the air where his neck had been just milliseconds earlier. Pressing the attack, she dove forward, leading Tamon's dodge and scoring a powerful crossing slash to his chest as he struggled to stand.
Stolls threw his arm to his right, chanting even louder as he kept his wand trained on Tamon; a stream of fire lurched forth from its tip and spilled onto the floor, forming a fast-moving wall of fire which raced for the prone Long Arm.
Tamon almost dodged the attack, the flames colliding with his leg as he stood and dashed to one side. Shrugging off the damage, he brought his spear around to BlackRose, only to find it pinned between a pair of crossed short swords.
Half-shouting, half-exhaling, Kite pulled his wrists apart, using the blades as leverage to rip the spear out of Tamon's hands. The Twin Blade followed through by thrusting both weapons straight at the now-defenseless Tamon, impaling him through the stomach and embedding both blades deep inside him.
Caught slightly off guard by the sensation of stabbing through digital flesh, Kite released his blades and stepped back; mild shock changed to growing confusion when he noticed the complete lack of expression on Tamon's face.
"Critical damage detected," said the voices, Tamon's lips remaining perfectly still. "Engaging primary defen-" the voices were cut off as a large sword cleaved the tanned, blue-clad Long Arm in two at the waist, splitting the torso and legs, which crumpled to the floor and lay completely still.
Stolls let out a long, fatigue-induced sigh. He felt at least an hour older, though he knew it couldn't have been more than a couple minutes. A slight shiver came over him as he stared at the mutilated corpse of the Long Arm; slowly it lost all color, fading to shades of gray before stretching into the air and vanishing completely from sight, a slight hiss the only accompaniment to its' destruction.
He hung his head, a few silver locks drifting down over his eyes, still gazing at the spot formerly occupied by Tamon. For a moment, he was reminded of the incident they had researched prior to entering The World - one involving the player Tsukasa. As he understood it, the player's recovery from her coma coincided with an event in the game, one in which Tsukasa was directly involved. His instincts alone drew him to the logical conclusion.
"In pace requiescat," he muttered softly.
"Is he... dead?" asked Kite, no small amount of hesitation in his voice.
"I don't know," answered Stolls, unsure of whom Kite was referring to.
Sheathing her blade, BlackRose glanced over at Stolls. "If Delphi could possess the character... I don't think it's gone just yet."
Briefly coming back to himself, the Wave Master shook his head, derailing his train of thought. "You're right. We should get out of here," he said, turning to his companions. "God only knows whether the Admins have figured out we're here or not. Shin, what's the word?"
Shinji's voice spoke directly to Stolls' player, appearing to come from the empty white void. "Yeah, I got everything. Have them both log out; I'll set up a chatroom so we can go over these out of The World. Tell them to look for Alias; I'm locking it with the word Origin."
Stolls nodded. "Let's get out of here. You guys got chat plug-ins?" He waited for the expected nods before continuing. "Good. Log out and meet us at #Alias. We'll dig through this stuff together. Password's Origin."
The white nothingness fell from around him, replaced with a black nothingness as he issued the log-off command. Slowly his senses came around from psychological neglect, reminding him that he was playing a game, that he was attached to a computer via headset and goggles, which he quickly set about removing.
The first thing to greet him was a distant skyscraper, lights shining brightly from the visible portion of downtown through the window; no sooner had he caught sight of his real surroundings than a whispering Shin cursed in Japanese. Dean blinked and threw the hacker a look. "What is it?" he asked, taking note of the wide eyes and slack jaw that now decorated his otherwise nondescript facial features.
A large text file reflected off Shinji's glasses; turning his attention to the screen, Dean scanned the title, his expression quickly mirroring Shinji's.
"Project Delphi"
-
*Kite has joined #Alias*
Kite: Hello?
BlackRose: Hey, Kite!
Deisart: Good, everyone's here. All right, there's no real way to sugarcoat this; we've got bad news, and we've got really bad news.
Shinji glanced over at Dean from his chair. "You sure we should tell them all this?"
Dean nodded, sitting down on the bed as Shinji typed. "We brought them into this; they deserve to know. And I think they're the only ones who can help us now."
Kite: What's the bad news?
Deisart: The bad news is, the files we got... weren't what they told us they were.
Kite: What do you mean?
BlackRose: What were they?
Deisart: We were told this was accounting data. Long story short, the title of the first file was "Project Delphi."
Kite: Delphi??? That thing?
BlackRose: No way!
Kite: What did it say?
Deisart: Hang on, I'll C&P
The bed creaked slightly as Dean shifted his weight, watching the words as they appeared on the screen, visibly ill at ease as he read the sentences they formed again.
Deisart: "Summary: An amalgam of digital entities, an ICE (Intrusion Countermeasure Electronics) unit is an automatic response system which acts independent of the user to defend a file, drive or server from hostile intruders. ICE recognizes over 22,000,000 known virus types, and - using advanced pattern-matching algorithms - is fully capable of identifying hacker penetration, adjusting its response to uniquely combat the attack, and even preemptively strike known hostile entities."
Deisart: "Date of Inception: 7/31/2008. Postmortem: Prototype units deemed unreliable following incident 24b-09. Funding withdrawn, project discontinued 9/16/2008."
Kite: Discontinued?
Deisart: Some sort of accident; apparently, a trial run caused Delphi to identify and aggressively attack the programmer who tested it, even outside of the experiment. Delphi managed to break into The World through the backdoor on Delta server, and the programmer, who also served as one of The World's Admins, was attacked in the game by Delphi. He fell into a coma and died six weeks later.
BlackRose: It killed him??
Deisart: Yes. It wasn't designed to function in a virtual environment such as The World, though; its means of defense was through the rewriting of data - usually crippling the targeted software, and occasionally to the point where Delphi could take control of viruses, or the software of invading hackers.
Kite: That sounds a lot like Data Drain...
Deisart: Indeed. One other thing I found was that the company has a record of this programmer being contacted by another company, one of their chief rivals at the time.
A *snap* came from behind; Shinji turned around to face Dean, his eyes wide in revelation. "That's it," he said. "It's all about security."
"What do you mean?"
Dean frowned. "You said earlier tonight that Altimit was nearly unbeatable, as far as operating systems go; that's why straightforward hacking into CC's mainframe wouldn't work. Asara, Rosenberg... they want Delphi, that's what this is about. Same thing with the other company; they wanted a security system that would ensure their OS could compete."
Shinji visibly flinched, his eyes hardening behind his glasses. "Right... or maybe they wanted a weapon. I mean, if Delphi can attack people - real people - through The World..."
"Cyber Connect would be finished," said Dean. "And maybe Altimit with them. Hell, it'd be like the Pluto Kiss all over again."
Suddenly, Dean rose from the bed, throwing a stern look at the hacker. "Shin, keep talking to Kite and BlackRose. Tell 'em everything... especially the really bad news." He paused to take a deep breath, and released it slowly in a vain attempt to keep his calm. "I'm going to make a phone call."
Spinning on his heels, Dean purposefully strode through the bedroom door and into the living room/kitchenette, where a cordless phone rested calmly on a wall-mounted recharger.
He didn't get far; three steps into the room, the phone rang, a shrill, electronic pulse set to a machine gun beat. Dean started for a moment, the detective in him already starting to fidget and shiver nervously. Steadying himself, he picked up the phone and pressed the call button. "Hello?" he greeted the caller weakly, his basic grasp of Japanese slipping from his mind.
A second's pause. With more control over his voice, he repeated the greeting. "Who is this?" he added, listening hard for any sign of life on the other line.
A single voice: noticeable Japanese accent, smug and confident, yet subdued and controlled. "You're a bad man, Mr. Stollis."
Dean's eyebrows fused themselves together, a growing rage and fear battling in his gut. "Chino," he said, his soft voice belying his thoughts.
He swore he heard the thug grin. "Ken, actually," said the caller with a chuckle. "But I'm glad you still remember me."
Dean sighed amidst his answer. "Let's cut the crap, Ken. We've got the details about your little pet A.I. Records of your so-called security system killing one of your own employees. Proof that it's running amok in The World."
"You don't have shit," said Ken. "You were a cop; you really think stolen evidence would hold up in court?"
Dean faltered for a moment, but held his ground. "Have you thought for a moment about what this could do to you if we sold it to Asara? Think what just one copy of Delphi could do to your little game, to their players. Now I ask you: you really think nobody's going to notice the connection between the six or so coma cases related to The World?" He paused, lowering his voice a notch to a more threatening tone, fighting down the tremble from his pounding heart. "How about six hundred? Six thousand? Sixty thousand, maybe?"
Ken audibly faltered for a moment, but recovered just as quickly. "Let's be realistic, Stollis; you're bent, not evil. You wouldn't dare hand it over to another company if you really thought that was going to happen."
Thinking quickly, Dean waited for a pair of seconds before replying. "You're right... although in truth, we were thinking of dropping this off at the nearest news station."
Ken fell silent; Dean took that as a cue to continue, calming down as he felt more in control. "Things like sources and facts rarely get in the way of a good story. I think a lot of people would be very interested to hear that the geniuses behind The World were sitting on a digital weapon of mass destruction."
"So what do you say, Ken?" asked Dean. "Feel like saving your job tonight?"
Several seconds of pause followed. Dean crooked an eyebrow, the chill of doubt and anxiety gripping his inner self once more. "Ken?"
"As a matter of fact," came the reply, a raspy near-whisper, "I do."
Before Dean could speak again, the line clicked and went dead, eliciting a puzzled stare from Dean as he pulled the receiver away from his ear. "Huh?" he muttered, gazing at the phone as if it were to spring to life at any moment. He was about to call for Shinji when a faint, repeated thumping caught his ears.
Slowly setting the receiver down, he strained to listen, each sound he made seemingly magnified by the sudden silence which snaked around him. The noise came again, drawing closer with each thump, seeming to come from beyond the door.
Something pounded against the door, startling Dean. Shinji's voice came immediately from the bedroom. "What was that?"
More thumping, faster and retreating from the door; it triggered in Dean's mind that the noises were footsteps, and with this revelation came several more. Fear made him dash for his leather jacket, still slung over the lounge chair; alarm and instinct picked through the pocket and produced the 9mm pistol he'd taken from Ken, sans silencer.
"Shinji!" he screamed. "Take cover!"
- End of Chapter IX