The day was slowly reaching its end, at least that's what Phoebe's watch told her, the lab completely lacked windows so she couldn't rely on the sun for telling time. Most people would find this somewhat unsettling but Phoebe was used to it, after all she had spent a great deal of her working life in a windowless room.

Phoebe sat at her laptop and condensed what information they had on the hackers. While she did have a respectable amount, none of it held any clues to the hackers' identities. The most promising piece of evidence was a file containing a recording of incoming and outgoing internet traffic at a nearby server node. From what she was able to gather, the hacker that had launched the attack was somewhere in the vague vicinity of the city, which was not helpful in the least. There were just too many people to search with her organization's limited resources, contacting the public authorities was out of the question as well, with all the red tape involved the people on the server would be dead before even the preparations for a search started. What was strange was how there had been absolutely no reports of catatonic people in front of their computers, at least some of the newly captured victims had to have family or roommates. This meant that the hackers either had some friends in high places, total control over the emergency system or a way to imprison those other people too. None of those possibilities sounded pleasant.

It was frustrating that after almost three whole days they didn't even have any idea who had launched the attack in the first place. Phoebe had called up her contacts in every hacker group she knew but none of them claimed to have any relevant operation running. She believed them, the groups she kept in contact with weren't ones to suddenly change to blackmail and hostage taking. At least it told her that whoever started this attack had a clean record, however this didn't mean that they hadn't hired some help. All in all, their investigation had ground to a standstill.

Phoebe sighed and stood up, then looked around the room. A guard stood by the door. Gerald was still over at the workstation, this time accompanied by Sarah. Hannah had told her that she was taking a nap in the common room. Harald was nowhere to be seen. Only Anna seemed relatively unoccupied so she was who Phoebe decided to report to.

"Hey Anna." She said.

Anna turned around. "What is it Phoebe?"

"It is as you said, those hackers really know what they are doing. None of the stuff I have got me any closer to finding where they are, only that the attacks come from a relatively nearby place."

Anna said: "Even if we don't find anything, there is still hope left. I think I mentioned a backdoor to you during our meeting in the device Gerald built."

Phoebe nodded. "Yeah, you did. Something about artefacts?"

"Exactly, there are a number of unique artefacts scattered around the server's world. A few of them can be gathered and assembled to form the Ban Hammer, it's what gives universal control over the server. There are only two people who can use it, Peter and Shadow. However due to the destructive nature of Shadow's mind, it probably would be a better idea if Peter was the one who used it. If I'm being honest, we never tested it, it only exists in theory."

Phoebe asked: "So, Peter is currently in the server trying to gather those things? How many are there?"

Anna put her palm to the back of her neck. "See, that's the problem. There are three hardcoded components, one of which is already in Peter's possession. Anything beyond that is decided by the storyteller."

"And who's that?" Phoebe asked.

Anna explained: "It's the system that controls the server on a larger scale. While it is intelligent, it is too narrow to be considered alive. We created it to make the server an interesting and diverse experience, its goal is to create difficult but manageable challenges for the server's inhabitants. Those can by anything from incredibly hostile environments to natural disasters. It is also what decides which other artefacts are used in the creation of the Ban Hammer. We thought of this as a security mechanism, even if one of us were to tell anyone the first three artefacts, we can't know anything beyond that. How exactly the additional artefacts are revealed is also up to the storyteller."

"That makes some amount of sense. But do you think Peter has enough time to gather those artefacts?"

Anna sighed. "I don't know, from the diagnostics readouts we can see that the simulation speed was significantly slowed down due to the attack. Theoretically we could disengage the security protocols to push it back up but…" She hesitated. "You know, I think at this point we should do that. If we wait much longer the hostages will probably die either way. We should gather everyone, I can't make this decision alone."

After a surprisingly short gathering they had decided that even with the involved risks, disengaging the security mechanisms was the best course of action. Sarah guided everyone to the big cube in the center of the lab.

Gerald asked: "So, what do those security mechanisms do anyways? I saw some of them, from what I could tell they mostly double-check each data transfer."

Sarah opened the door on the side of the cube. "That is mostly what they do. Even when they are disengaged the server should run as it would normally, provided nobody goes against the rules. They are there to detect anomalous transmissions, if one is found it is prevented and reported. Sadly this takes a lot of processing power since every transmission needs to be run through multiple filters."

Gerald asked another question: "How are you going to turn those off by the way? I thought you had no control over the server."

Sarah replied: "It's a hardware switch. Sadly once they are disengaged a restart is required to re-engage them and that would kill the hostages."

Phoebe was directly behind Gerald. The inside of the cube was expectedly cramped but surprisingly cold, not something she had expected from the inside of a supercomputer. In the middle there was a terminal which showed several diagnostic readouts. Most of them were in the green but one of them was decidedly red, namely the simulation speed. Below the terminal was a big switch behind a glass panel.

Sarah pointed to the terminal. "Currently running at a ratio of one to sixty, that's the absolute lowest we ever had if you disregard the early testing phase."

She took a deep breath as she flipped the glass panel aside and rested her hand on the switch. After a few seconds of hesitation she yanked the switch downwards. For a few seconds nothing happened, nothing changed, not the gentle humming of the server, not the numbers on the terminal. Then suddenly the simulation speed ratio started rapidly rising, its color changing from red to orange to yellow to green as it climbed higher. Once it broke quadruple digits it started slowing down, the numbers were now displayed in blue."

Gerald asked: "What does blue mean?"

Sarah replied: "It means it's faster than it should be with the current amount of expected load. Again, as long as nothing unusual happens in the server this is absolutely fine. It'll probably take a bit to stabilize. Hopefully this gives Peter the time he needs."

They then went over to Gerald's device again to discuss further steps, they came to the conclusion that they should still keep digging, if they could find the hackers on their own it certainly would be safer than relying on an untested backdoor.

After she disengaged from the shared mind Phoebe felt surprisingly refreshed, she immediately went back to her laptop and continued searching for any connections she could find.

It was getting close to midnight when Phoebe decided to stop, everyone else had already gone to sleep, save for Gerald. She suspected that he was taking some of his old meds to stay awake as he had often done when they were working on a particularly interesting project.

Just as she stood up Gerald called her over. He didn't sound very confident. "Hey Phoebe, I found something weird."

Phoebe slowly walked over to him, then tilted her head to signal him to keep talking.

Gerald said: "So… after we disconnected I noticed something weird. I didn't want to say anything, I needed to dig around their code some more to verify."

"What did you find?"

Gerald stood up from his chair. "That's the thing, nothing. I found nothing that could explain what I saw. It's best if I show you."

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a glass marble, which he placed on a table across the room. He then went over to his device and placed his right hand on the metal ball. Phoebe was getting confused, why was he connecting to the shared mind? What did the marble have to do with this?

Before she had a chance to walk over and ask him inside the shared mind, Gerald had disconnected again. He looked over to her, then pointed his finger towards the marble on the table, further increasing Phoebe's confusion.

"Boop." Gerald said and made a pushing motion.

To Phoebe's complete surprise the marble was launched off the table with a force that couldn't be explained with a sudden gust of wind or a very, very localized earthquake.

"What was that?" Phoebe asked in bewilderment.

Gerald threw his hands in the air. "Exactly!"

Before Phoebe had an opportunity to ask more questions Gerald had already connected to the shared mind again, only to disconnect a second after. This time as he made a pulling motion, the marble came rolling towards him until he stopped it with his foot.

"Magic!" He exclaimed. "That's got to be the only explanation."

Phoebe said: "I get everything I saw up until now but this is completely insane."

Gerald said: "Exactly what I thought. I did find something out while digging through their code though. I originally skipped the biological interface because that's not my field but when I looked at it again it doesn't make sense at all. Nothing indicates that this software should ever be able to connect to a brain. I suppose that's what they meant when they said they are making use of a phenomenon they don't quite understand."

Phoebe shook her head. "Just completely insane."

Gerald said: "Whatever this is, we need to ask them about it tomorrow. I have had enough of whatever this unscientific and yet very real thing is. Then again, you know what they say about technology and magic…"

A silence fell over both of them. Phoebe tired her best not to contemplate the implications of whatever this was, not until tomorrow when she could get actual answers.

Suddenly something happened that made her task a lot easier, out of nowhere the intercom at the door had started ringing. None of the proximity alarms had been tripped. Still, this was refreshingly less strange than whatever she had just witnessed. She exchanged a quick glance with Gerald and then walked over to the intercom.

She did not know the voice on the other end but its tone definitely put her on high alert. "You need to listen to me, you are in danger!"