Chapter IV: Rule One (POV) - Time

AN:

Hey there, Fan-fic-folks!

So, I'm trying an experiment with the decking part of this chapter. It's sort of a balance between transposing current hacking principles (what I can understand of them without a degree in coding, anyway) from our current computing tech to a more futuristic VR-sensorium program (eg. a DoS attack that, in modern terms, floods a network with defunct requests for access so legitimate users can't get access of their own and it sort of freezes up, in the Shadowrun world becomes a freeze program that you can throw to immobilise an ICE program) and what I like to call 'sunglasses-clad skull-gif hacker duelling' after the hilarious tropes that Hollywood seems obsessed with. Add 'em together and even things out so they make some consistent sense, then I think I got that 'rule of cool' thing nailed.

Also, yep. I did the thing. Had this plot twist planned since the beginning. Hope you enjoy.

Thanks for reading and, as always, please review.

I kept returning to the downloaded information for weeks afterward, scouring it for anything that might give me a hint as to what Lofwyr was looking for. Even the vaguest implication would be useful, if only to put me on the right path. I'd finally decided on a plan, see, and fulfilling it meant I'd need to strip Lofwyr of everything the bastard old worm owned. Everything he'd built I'd see destroyed, every design perverted, every employee turned. I'd burn it all away until nothing remained but the Great Dragon himself and then, and only then, would I put him down.

Robbing a dragon was an urban myth, something said to be pursued only by the idiotic or the suicidal. But none of them ad ever gone up against me. Never fuck with a Dragon? Hah. By the time I was done, they'd be warning dragons away from me!

It was late evening, just after a weekday run, when my confidence took something of a... hit. I'd gone back through my built in backdoor and was taking the latest uploaded reports from the search - apparently one of the operatives had found a possible lead in a Knight Errant server farm. An indirect lead, though. A codename in an almost entirely redacted file linked to surveillance pictures linked to a codename of a different, differently (But still almost entirely) redacted file. The phrase they used in the report was 'might be a lead'.

As my ex husband would say, 'Fuckin' A!'. I immediately turned to leave and cried out in pain as an attack ICE suddenly rammed into me. It felt like frost surging through my entire body as my firewalls locked the progression of the invasive halt-code. I tossed out a flashback program and backed the hell up. The program shook as my code wormed its way into the program and froze the thing's pursuit protocols in decoding mismatched target signals. Every ICE had a... priority list of sorts, it told it what to go after and in what order, and the flashback program just made it detect signal ghosts of everything it had ever seen. The ICE was left thoroughly confused. It wouldn't hold for long though - the code was obvious and easily purged by the automated framework adherence subroutines. So, I ran.

My brain was working overtime as I dashed off. Not due to the frost, though it was a good habit to break that kind of cognitive affect in all honesty, but due to the fact that I didn't recognise that ICE. Since I programmed this entire firewall from the BIOS up and knew every part of it better then my morning skincare routine, that meant someone was screwing with my software.

That meant there was a single, fatally important question: if they'd added one new countermeasure, what the frakk else did they add?

I neared the last corner, veering onto the final approach to the exit portal crossroads, and that's when I saw it. A sickly green, almost pulsating spider-form with spines running over its back like porcupine quills and wicked sharp bone blades for legs. I... I had no idea what this did. My code analyser was sending out alert after alert telling me to get the hell out and away from this thing, but not once did it give even a single feature of the code. All it said was 'Danger: Unidentifiable Black ICE'.

For those of you who don't know, Black ICE was the charmingly nondescript slang for Internal Countermeasures with very fatal effects. This thing could put me into a coma, melt my brain, destroy my kidney function, or even just kill me outright. The first three might not be immediately fatal, but you'd sure as hell wish you were dead, and it left you just enough dexterity and determination to get yourself that way.

And unfortunately for my panicking alert program, it was standing between me and the exit. There was no alternate route, no hidden secret path. Mainly because this was the alternate, hidden, secret path. I couldn't go over, or around, or below. My only option was to go through.

I pulled up my program list, scanning through to see what offensive or distracting programs I'd slotted into my quickbar loadouts. Not much, really. Problem with equipping for a stealth mission, when it all goes horribly wrong and you need to be loud and highly deadly, you're out of luck.

Simply put, I was in deep shit.

So, I'd need a plan, because there was no way in hell I was dying here. Not before I'd slain a Dragon. George, eat your heart out.

Ooh. Now there's an idea.

I pull up an infiltrator program and send it out to the right, along with a second smaller program to the left. Once they were in position, I activate the left program. I'd called it the Krakker, back when I first coded it, in a reference to some old volcano that'd apparently been the loudest natural sound in existence. It used to be the loudest sound point blank until that lunatic Coyote pulled off the bloody Great Ghost Dance and detonated half the volcanoes in North America. Anyway, I felt the name described its function very nicely.

It exploded into light and sound and fire, spinning wildly on the spot as it did everything possible to attract the attention of the detection systems on every program in this network. The moment it did, the Black ICE spun and started toward it. That's when I activated the infiltrator and sent it in. Likely as not, I wouldn't be able to control or change the program, but I'd at least be able to find out what horrible fate I'd be avoiding when I kicked this thing's ass.

I also sent out another Krakker, this time to the right and along the pathway there. One never knew when another distraction would come in handy. Especially when - the skybox of the worldspace suddenly started to glow red as a loud klaxon sound blared - that happened.

My alert system had barely bleeped when I suddenly leapt left and out of the path of a flamer attack program launched by the two Ballistae ICE that'd now taken up positions along the route behind me. I responded with a packet-blaster to soften the program's firewall and followed it up with a degrader worm that rapidly broke the code of both programs down into code scraps.

A belated scream-alert from off behind me let me know that my first Krakker had gone down, so I quickly activated the next one and watched as the Black ICE turned and charged for the new target. The moment it passed the threshold of the crossroads path, I threw up a firewall program to block it off. It wouldn't hold a Black ICE for long, but it was enough time for me to dash along the new gap and exit out the portal to my home worldspace.

I sat down on the hard wooden (and illusory) floor, blinking and trying to catch my breath. Frag. What the hell was that? I needed more information, immediately. So, I stood up and started moving for the bookcases to activate the backdoor again, only to stop in horror and fury. Every last shelf in the worldspace was now empty. They'd closed off my fucking backdoor! The (long list of swear words) bastards!

I yanked off my deck and tossed it angrily to the table with a growl. What the hell was I supposed to do now? I slammed my hand down hard onto the metal of the desk, wincing in bitter satisfaction at the pain that blared up my arm and sent little twinges into my shoulder.

"Careful Ice, let that anger burn too hot and you might melt." A voice called out from the doorway. I turned to look, seeing my dwarfish roommate leaning against one side of the door-frame. Upon noticing my glare, Max flashed an irritatingly cheeky grin that I answered instinctively with a bitter scowl.

"Hardy har. You can frakk off, Max, if you're going to be like that." I flapped a hand in her vague direction, keeping what little veneer of good manners I could while burning with rage.

She rolled her eyes and strolled in, taking a seat on one of the drones that I'd 'condescended' to allow her to keep in here. I was determined this place was going to be temporary, so I couldn't make too many personal... alterations.

"So," She started, "What's bothering you?"

I glared at her. The girl smirked back. Damn her.

Fuck it. I sighed, then began to speak. I told her about some of my plans, holding back most of the specifics and sticking to general objectives and methodology: Attack Dragon, Steal from Dragon, Break Dragon, Kill Dragon. Simple enough, right?

When I finished, she leant back and whistled. "Ambitious. I like it. So, what do you need to do first?"

"Get information. There's a Knight Errant server farm that apparently has some useful information on."

"Knight Errant..." She murmured thoughtfully. "I think Chlo' mentioned we might have some biz with Knight Errant soon."

I eyed her sceptically. "Well. That's certainly convenient."

"Isn't it though?" She smiled. "It's always nice when life arranges itself to our convenience. Do you know where this server farm is?"

I shake my head. "Not yet. I need to review some information and do a little legwork to run it down."

She hmms in response. "Well, I'm pretty sure the Knight Errant run won't be for awhile, so you should have time to get all that biz done with. Do you want any help?"

I sigh. Until that patronising little question, this had been surprisingly amicable. I might actually have been getting along with the little hipster. "No." I state curtly. "I can do this myself."

She just smiles. "I'm sure you can, Ice. Well," She stands up. "I guess I'll come find you when you're done. Good luck."

I scoff. "I don't need luck."

She smiles again, shakes her head, and leaves without another word. Thankfully. I twirl with a huff and grab my deck. My source of information was gone, but that wasn't the end of it. What I had could get me answers, I just needed to find them.

It took three hours, but I did it. I found the farm. Like there was ever any doubt I would. The convenient coincidences really were stacking up in my favour - the farm was right here in Seattle. Honestly, I was getting slightly suspicious. Next they'd tell me Lofwyr's super secret stash of company documents was in an unguarded briefcase in a bus station locker.

Now I knew the location, there was so much more I could do. I spent the next hour hunting down floor plans, security documents, guard rotations, anything I could get that would allow us to break in unnoticed.

I'd been finished for around ten minutes - which I'd used to stare blankly at a wall while I planned and pondered - when Chloe poked her head into my room. "Hey Vicky-"

"Don't call me that." I quickly interject, hoping to cut that nickname off at the knees before it can learn to walk.

From Chloe's grin, I only made things worse "Maxie says she told you 'bout the Knight Errant run. Didya find out where this server thing was?"

I gave the brief overview, and she pursed her lips regretfully. "Not our place, dude. Sorry. But we can go there next, I guess? Do a little overtime?" Her guileless attempt at comfort was... irritating.

"Acceptable." I said, wanting nothing more than to get on with things.

"Wiz." Chloe continued. "Well, we got a run on today, so get that ornery butt out here already. Or should I get Maxie to come in here and Chase you out?"

I swallowed a groan of disgust and pointedly ignored her subsequent comment about spoilsports. "It's fine. Let's go, then." I pushed past her and stalked out into the main room, my heels clacking on my metal floor before the sound got muffled by the tacky, effusive, and rapidly multiplying carpets Max had scattered all over the floors of the main room. Her simple and vastly unfashionable solution to the problem of my loud shoes.

She should probably just be grateful I wasn't wearing my normal stilettos. Not only were they far louder on metal, they also had a hypodermic needle with a fast acting poison in the heel and a shock-pad in the toecap. I'd kick her in the snatch in a heartbeat.

Max was sitting on the couch, a long box in her hands. As I stormed calmly in, she glanced past me and grinned. I generously ignored their knucklewalker mockery and barked out "Well? Are we going or what?"

Max rose with a nod. "Yep. We're heading into an Aztechnology branch to grab a thing."

"What thing?"

"A thing. It's big and round and blue and I have no frakking idea what it is. But we gotta find it."

I nodded in acknowledgement. A thought occurred. "Wait. Aztechnology? As in the Corporate Court position-holding, second largest company in the world, owner of an entire continent Aztechnology? I thought we were running against Knight Errant?"

Chloe nodded. "Uh, yeah. That Aztechnology. Why? What's the problem?"

I gulped and shook my head, feeling the dread tingle up and down my spine. "Oh no, this is a bad idea."

Max wafted a hand at me, utterly unfazed by my panic and still as amiable and hipster-ey as ever. "Oh, it'll be fine. Don't sweat that drek, Ice. We'll go in, stay quiet, find the thingy, and be out before you know it. Nice and easy."

"Eat fire, you undead fucks!"

Chloe's voice really did carry. Even from the other side of the complex, I could hear her yell as she slammed down the button on the detonator.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuckity fuck, fuck fuck!" I muttered as I fled from the explosions now racking the Aztech complex. People were screaming, alarms were screaming, rapidly firing turret emplacements were screaming. Good fucking times all round at the Aztech Place.

Chloe and Max had both disappeared a while back, split off by the initial response to our 'sneaking' through restricted areas. I was alone. Aside from the red and white armoured Aztechnology Vampire Commandos chasing me down, anyway. Ugh. Poor, disgusting bastards. Getting the HMHV Virus was probably the worst thing to happen to these people, and the idiots embraced it to become bloodsucking monsters.

I emptied my clip off to my left, the bullets tearing through the armour and ripping the desiccated flesh of the Vampire Commando that was about to put a bullet in my head. Eerily accurate, these creatures. One myth of Vampirism the old world got right.

A quick reload later and I started firing again, then ducked into a side hall as soon as I saw the thing ash. I quickly dash off and somehow miraculously manage to lose them while heading up to the next floor. Lucky for me, someone had left a remarkably unsecured server room right there and I found a terminal to plug into. Trying to locate my erstwhile colleagues within the system itself would be a death sentence for them - so I was more than tempted to try it - but instead I started dismantling security.

First down were the cameras. Bloody things were everywhere, and then they weren't. Second, the 'lasers' over every door, window, corridor, and otherwise. One of the things that triggered the alarms in the first place, when we without intranet ID walked through them, and now they were gone. Finally went the drones, not that there were many of them. Maybe a dozen in the whole complex. Anyway, they were down too now.

I left the alarms, though. Maybe the noise would cover any I made to the vampires. Worth a shot, as Chloe would say

After that frantic five minutes of work, I got the hell out. I didn't know if they could track intranet usage, but better safe than shot. Or bitten. Or slashed, or broken, or punched, or-

Right, leaving.

I eased open the door and checked both ways, seeing nothing. So, I crept out and started along to the stairs again. Our target was on the 85th floor and I was still down on the 83rd. I got up to floor 84 and stepped through, smirking as it let me through without a problem. I love computers.

This floor was what they called 'low priority R&D'. In corporate jargon terms, it's for the 'storage of long-term payoff, low resource intensity research operations'. In English, it's the crap they don't really care much about but need to keep around anyway for one reason or another. Usually publicity. I had a similar area for useless employees I couldn't get rid of. Rather than firing them directly like they deserved and getting bad publicity from it, I had them all put on sinking projects and then downsized when the project was cut. Clever, right? My ex certainly thought so. The Prescott Foundation initiated a similar practice a few months after I took the helm of ChaseSpace.

For the Aztechnology branch, this was mostly arcane tech. Not being magical in any way, shape, or form, I hadn't the faintest idea what any of it did. The small tree of what looked like floating plums certainly was... striking, though.

I kept forward, striding through the silent, shadowed rooms. The main overlights hadn't engaged. They were trigger-attached to the door lasers, but my hack had negated that connection. The low red emergency lighting was pleasant, though, dark as it was.

...can Vampires see in the dark?

I cleared the floor as fast as I could after that little gem of a thought occurred.

The 85th floor was just as dark as the 84th, though I could only see a corridor of it rather than an open-floor plan room of the entire thing. I still hadn't heard anything from Chloe and Max, but I supposed they must be still alive. I think the Vampires would've found me by now, if they weren't.

I followed the corridor along, taking a left at the first t-junction, then going through a door to my right into a foyer-room with a large statue in the centre of it. Icarus, the fool of ambition. Interesting decor for one of the biggest megacorporations in the world. Some idiot middle manager probably had it put up without bothering to read up on their idea first. Pity, really, that Aztechnology doesn't like firing its employees. This one would merit it.

I bypassed the interesting statue and went through the sliding door on the other side of the room. This should be the main corridor, so my goal is over... there! I hurried over and slid the door open, stepping into the next room with a smile. The vault door was embedded in the far wall, at the top of a small ramp. It was an impressive thing of ugly metal with gears and pistons to allow them to move its massive bulk. Even a Troll would struggle to manually lift this thing. I chuckled, heading up the ramp and over to the infinitely recognisable security terminal plugged into the side of it. "A Tolman? How meagre. It's like Aztechnology wants us to steal this thing."

I plugged into the console and had the codes cracked in three seconds.

As I detached my deck and the blue skybox of the Matrix had gone, a small, sudden noise alerted me. Company. I turned slowly, knowing I was cornered by the Vampires. They were quiet. Max and Chloe would've yelled my name the moment they walked in. Sure enough, a full squad of vampires stood at the bottom of the ramp, aiming their guns up at me. I could see them salivating, practically oozing their desire to eat me. Fucking cannibals. Well, anthropophagus individuals, anyway. It's only cannibalism if you're eating your own species, no? Either way, they were terrifying predators coiled to strike at any moment and I was doing everything I could not to trigger them.

I very slowly raised my hands.

Two of them split off from the group and started forward, ready to take me to whatever interrogation chamber and body-disposal unit they'd been told to, when the wall began to quake.

We all looked over, seeing the masonry and metal quiver with repeated impacts like it was a sack of hornets. "What's..." I breathed out, and then the wall exploded.

Most of the vampires closest to the wall were knocked down, but some of the more distant ones were prepared enough and fast enough to dodge the cloud of razor sharp shards and dust. Two of the vampires, the ones right by the wall, were ashed instantly as their heads were severed from their bodies and the rest of their follows were scattered like blood-craving bowling pins.

Through the gap in the wall strolled a large, blue haired troll, dwarf-sized girlfriend on one side, and dwarf-sized minigun on the other. She grinned at the destruction. "Hey Ice. These kids bothering you?"

I stared, mildly slackjawed. That fucking girl has finally lost what could charitably be called her 'mind'. Where did she even get a minigun? We did not bring that thing with us.

One of the vampires makes a move, barely twitches, really, but Chloe shifts the barrel of the minigun an inch and lets loose a roar of bullets that shreds the little wretch into pieces. Max plugged her fingers into her ears with a grimace. The others immediately raise their weapons and move to shoot. They manage to get off a round or two each, maybe even a clip, before Chloe's minigun roars again and another vampire disintegrates into dust. The rest of them raised their guns and started firing. Max immediately dodged to the left, tossing out a couple of grenades as she vanished behind a wall. Chloe just stood and took it, firing back with her minigun.

I take the opportunity to spin and check on the door. It was just open enough for me to squeeze through, so I dashed into the gap and shimmied through. From the yell of "Get away from her!" outside, apparently one of the two that'd come to get me made a grab for me and missed, luckily. I lazily loosed off a couple of rounds into the gap, smirking at the small squeals of pain from whatever vampire tried to get fresh with me.

Now, to the room. Chloe and Max had the vampire situation in hand. The room was small, maybe eight feet tall, fifteen wide by twenty long from the door. Each side wall was lined with workbenches that had various devices on. The middle of the far wall had a detached display case, topped by a glass box with a thing in it. It was as described. Big. Round. Blue-ish. A pale lettered inscription on the glass said 'Oudun MSK ', whatever that meant.

"Found it!" I called back outside.

"Great!" Chloe grunted. "Now grab the thing so we can - back the frag off, bitey! - buzz outta here already!"

I take the butt of my pistol and thwack the side of the glass. It doesn't crack. How annoying. I let my eyes drift over the thing, studying the outer layers of protections around it. Ah! There's an access port in the side. I plugged in and tried to access- something fizzed and immediately launched me across the room. I hit the wall, and partly the ceiling, with a muted crack that I knew was probably my skull. Why is it always me that gets the concussions? Sliding down to the ground felt like it happened in slow motion, all my limbs just too heavy to keep aloft from the nice, solid ground where they belonged.

Everything was a little... glowy? I blinked and shook my head - bad idea, bad idea! - trying to clear the driftiness. I could hear ringing in my ears, alongside the constant cracks of gunfire outside, and everything was numb and foggy, like a visual version of when you sit on your hand and get strong enough pins and needles in it that it doesn't even feel like your limb anymore.

I could feel myself drifting more and more when suddenly, a burst of energy exploded through my body and I pulled my head upright - almost on autopilot, really - to look around me. The door was still going, nearly open now though, and that damnable glass casing was still sealed up.

I thought it was just my head spinning, but the glass casing was... moving? It seemed like it was... shaking? That's... discomfiting, and is the floor shaking too? Oh, no. That's the whole room. Is this an earthquake? That's an obnoxious security safeguard, Aztechnology!

There was an electronic, discordant laugh, and as I heard the door finally grind to a halt, a voice just on the edge of my awareness drawled a quiet, laconic "Showtime."

Then, everything went black.

"Hey, Ice! Come on, get up, we gotta go! Those Knight Errant fucks know we took their system and they are pissed!" Two burly arms hoisted me to my feet and planted me standing, then quickly dusted me off as a blue-topped face appeared in my eyeline. Well, dominated my eyeline, really. "You okay to move?"

I shoved the troll off me - she moved entirely of her own accord - muttered "I'm fine, let's go before the damn vampires catch-". I started to stride past her when her words registered. "Knight Errant?" And also the location. No glass casing, no vault door, no workbenches. We were in the corridor outside a glass-windowed server farm covered in the KE diamond logo. "What..? Where's the..?"

Chloe appeared in my eyeline again. "Dude, what the frakk are you talking about? We geeked those bloodsuckers a week ago, chummer. We're in that KE server farm you found, remember?"

"No, you-" I rubbed a hand across my face in confusion. That can't be right. We were in the Aztech complex... "Tell me the truth!"

"I am!" She looked almost insulted at the thought. "It's the chip truth, Ice, I swear. You got some dumpshock from the server or something? That knockback you just took was pretty bad."

"No, I..." What knockback, I don't remember any- Images filter into my head, scattered images, of breaking into a building and interfacing with the server, then getting shocked and flung out of the room. "I don't know... later. Let's get out of here."

"Wiz. Slot and run, Maxie, Ice's got static and we're getting the frakk outta dodge!"

The little dwarf appeared at Chloe's shoulder, then tapped something on her rig. Several drones flew past us from all directions, firing at unseen targets. I pulled myself upright and took a step forward, then flopped down. I would've had another head injury if it weren't for Chloe's surprisingly fast reflexes. She held me for a moment, then shrugged and slung me over her shoulder. I didn't resist, too caught up panicking inside my own head. It'd been a week? Why couldn't I remember what I'd done? She stormed off alongside Max, taking potshots at more KE operatives. We made it back to the exit point in minutes, then out onto the street. It was close, but we managed to get back to Nana's neighbourhood without a problem.

Of course, then we made a problem. See, I'd resolved my internal dispute by crushing it into a box in the corner of my mind to deal with later and had heard Max's proposal of a new destination. While Chloe agreed, I wasn't pleased by her suggestion. "I don't need to see Kate."

Chloe crossed her arms and glared. "You're dizzy, concussed, and you can't recall drek since the Azzie run a week ago. Yeah, you need to see Kate."

"No."

"Yes."

"No."

"Yes."

"No."

"Ye-"

"Quiet." Max waved a hand. Chloe immediately shut up.

I smirked. "No."

The little dwarf glared at me. "She's right, Ice. You're injured. You need to see the doc."

"No, I just need you to tell me what happened." I crossed my arms and glared right back, belligerent to the end. I had my hill, and if I was to die on it, so be it. "Now. I need to know."

"And if we do, you'll go see the doc?" Max raised an eyebrow.

I rolled my eyes. She's really not shifting on that position? Fine, whatever. I could retreat to another hill, if it got me what I wanted. "Fine, agreed. Now, what happened?"

The two of them exchanged looks, doing that weird couple-telepathy thing they'd been doing for as long as I'd known them. Always wandering around at school, talking without talking. Little weirdos. "Well, the Azzie run practically resolved itself. We'd taken out most of the vamps when you got outta the room with the sphere thing and took out the last few before demanding we leave already. You spent most of the week holed up in your room goin' through your KE drek-drop of data 'til you came out at, like, six this morning and demanded we do this run today. We got here, geeked some guards, and you went in the server room while we kept lookout. Something exploded, alarms went off as you flew out into the corridor and hit your head, and you know what happened from there."

Hmph. Well that was singularly useless. I should not have made that concession. Well, now I know that whatever happened was due to something in the server room, I suppose. Maybe I tripped some faulty Black ICE and this is just some small-time biofeedback playing merry hell with my head? If so, it's not something Kate could help with. Either way, I made a deal. Damnit. "Thanks. Let's go."

They exchanged looks again, before taking positions at each side of me and escorting me to the chopshop. At least they didn't gloat.

Kate smiled up at us when we walked in. Her doctor-demeanour was in full force today. She always was the nice one. "Good afternoon. What seems to be the problem today?"

Chloe picked me up and basically dropped me into one of the beds. I landed with a thump and all the breath rushed out of me. If I wasn't trying to get it back, I would've glared at her as she grinned at me. "Ice's head is fragged."

"Chloe!" Max reprimanded her with a shrill voice and a sharp elbow. I wasn't sure what she was reprimanding Chloe for, her words, her tone, her dropping me, or maybe Chloe just hogged the covers last night, but it was definitely a reprimand for something. Chloe didn't even flinch, just chuckled and ambled over to lean against one of the walls, crossing her arms.

"Well, she is! She can't remember any of the drek that happened over the last week and she can barely stand up. That sounds pretty fragging fragged to me."

Kate snorted. "I'll thank you to kindly leave the medical decisions to me, Chloe." She took a machine over to me and began to scan me. "Hmm. There is some evidence of neural trauma, though the cause is... hmm. Could you remove the ring around your neck? The Data Storage format is apparently interfering with the scan."

I sat up immediately, ignoring the twinges of pain and the head-spinning dervish that threatened to push me back into the black of unconsciousness. "My ring?"

Kate frowned at me. "Yes, the ring. I assume you were on a datasteal job of some sort and you're using it as hidden storage. Very clever, incidentally. I wouldn't have noticed without doing this specific neural-information scan-type."

The other two are staring between me and the ring, looking bewildered. "You didn't tell us that thing was hidden storage, Ice."

"That's because she didn't know."

The datajack in my temple suddenly flared brightly and we all whirled to stare at the glowing figure suddenly standing in the doorway. W-wait. I know that voice. Oh Jesus I know that voice. Recalled images suddenly fly through my head like a flickering slideshow of way-too-late realisations. I heard it back when this all started and I heard it when I hit my head the first time and... I'd woken up next to its owner for almost four years.

The figure stalked forward with an almost animalistic, predatory gait, like a lion on the great plains. Familiar, gelled blond hair, familiar, sharp blue eyes - and weren't they just as amused and mocking as ever - and a smirk so familiar I practically ached on seeing it.

"Honey," drawled my long-dead husband, "I'm home!"

I blinked at the image of Nathan frakking Prescott and my head cleared entirely, though the spinning became reeling and the bewilderment became sheer, heart-racing anxiety. Everyone turned to look at me. "You're married?!"

"Not for seven fucking years. Not since this asshole disappeared and was declared legally dead!"

Nate shrugged, gave a wry little grin. "Well, reports of my death, etcetera, etcetera." He paused. "Actually, scratch that. Not so exaggerated." He flashed me a boyish grin that made my teeth ache with the automatic need to return it. I clenched down on them though, feeling the ache spread throughout my whole jaw with furious satisfaction. There was no way I was going to smile at him. Never again. Not for him.

The silence stretched out awkwardly as I glared and everyone else just looked shocked and/or confused. Nate rubbed the back of his neck nervously, another mannerism that sent pangs of familiarity spreading through me to join the aches that I was carefully ignoring along with everything else as I forced myself not to cringe in anticipation when his hand rose. "Long time no see, huh?"

"Long time no..?" The bastard. The absolute frakking bastard. The fear vanished, replaced by anger. I thoroughly embraced it. I'd spent too long afraid. "You piece of drek! Where they hell have you been? It's been seven years!" I made to stand up, to storm over and slap him like he justly deserved, but Kate's comforting hand on my shoulder was enough for me to keep control.

He chuckled. "Nowhere you wanna hear about, babe. Trust me. There are far more important questions to ask."

I opened my mouth to retort something bitter and angry, feeling my mind drop into that old pattern of defensiveness and attack and feeling oh so small and stupid that so characterised the later years of our marriage, when the fact that there were other people in the room was suddenly brought to my attention. Chloe was hard to ignore. "Ain't drek we wanna ask you, Presc-dick."

Nathan turned to her with a mocking grin. "Oh, how very clever. Then again, I wouldn't expect better from you, drop-out. Told back then if you kept up the company you did, then you'd stay just as fragging stupid as ever and look! I was right!" He turned further, taking in the still-shocked expressions of the rest of the room with visible pleasure. He was almost quivering with it. "Oh, hey! The gangs all here! The Dropout, The Dwarf, and Killer Katie!" He gave a dark little chuckle. "Man, if any of you had any talent, you could start a band!"

Chloe bristled and made to retort, but I decided to cut in. This could go on for awhile and I was far too fucking angry to let it. I steadied my hands and took a breath. "Look, Nate. We're not married anymore, and I lost interest in you long before that changed. Why the fuck are you here? What will it take for you to drop your shitty hologram and back the frakk out of my life again?"

"Well, is that any way to talk to someone who's about to-" Nathan suddenly stopped, stared at me, his smile broadening. "Wait, you think I'm a hologram? What, I'm just sat off in some shithole backroom somewhere laughing at you while I hack into that little bitty box in your head, just to say hi after all this time?" He laughed disbelievingly and shook his head almost fondly. "Man, Vic. You're smarter than that. If you were that stupid, you wouldn't've done drek with ChaseSpace. Youngest CEO in a Century and all that." He leaned in, grinning again. "Try again. Work it out. You got this, babe." He paused, pursed his lips. "Though you kinda have been gettin' hit in the head a lot recently..."

I sigh. When Nate got some little game in his head like this, he'd never let it go. Frankly, I just wanted him to get the frakk away from me, but that wasn't gonna happen while he was still in my systems and I didn't have my deck in reach. "Fine." I began to look him over. First, a brief scan. He was transluscent, another mark for my hologram theory, but... hmm. Wait. There was no signal flicker. Matrix latency should make the image flicker, ever so slightly, but nothing. Either he's in the damn ward - which I doubt, but could be possible - or he's not sending over the Matrix. The latter was even more doubtful, the Matrix was linked into everything on the planet and Nate had neither the interest nor the intellect to find any pre-crash Lostech that might actually work.

A mote of something coalesced in my mind, brief inklings of a possibility that this might be something... big. Unless he's lying, of course. Which is more than likely, knowing this prick, but if he's not lying and he's really not a hologram, then maybe he's...

Just one time, while I was visiting Nathan at his dad's company headquarters, I'd met one of the sentient programs that inhabited certain portions of the Matrix. What name he went by, I can't recall, but I do remember how... solid, his manifestation was. I mentioned my recollection and Nate grinned. "Getting warmer, Vic." He drawled, his best car salesman tone on full blast.

Okay, so he's definitely getting at what I think he's getting at, but that's impossible. "You're not an AI, Nate. You were a person, you can't become an AI, that's not how it works."

"Bwaaap! Wrong! Sorry pretty lady, but you're out!" He shook his head again. "I really thought you'd be a little more open minded than that. Too bad, Vic. It's true."

I scoffed, rolled my eyes. "No, it's not. Frakk off, Nate. I'm not that person who'll just agree with you for whatever anymore. I have a gun and I will use it if you don't go. Now."

Nate groaned in irritation. "You have a gun? Hello? Artificial Intelligence here! Unless you put that thing to your own fucking temple, that's not gonna do drek."

"M-my temple..? You hacked my datajack?" My voice was quiet, timid, all the roaring fire and fury gone in an instant as I realised just what he was getting at by 'bitty box in your head'. My head. I reached up in horror and let my fingers graze over the metal embedded in my temple. This was wrong. This was a... a violation. Hit me, yell at me, degrade me, whatever, I'll fucking live. But now he's in my head. In my mind. I can almost feel his fingers ghosting down my spine, sending little tingles of fear through my entire datajack-wired nervous system. He can't take this away from me, he can't. He can't! I start to curl inward, burying my thoughts in rabid denials even as my voice bursts out of me like a whirlwind. "You bastard, how the fuck could-"

He sighed, and I could see his jaw clench. He was frustrated. Good, I thought, bitter and spiteful. I was trying to get angry again, but all I felt was small and alone. The hipster, the prude, and the fucking Trog being in the room didn't even register anymore. "No, Vic. I didn't... Ugh. Okay. Look, you remember what you were doing before that whole thing with Rach and the Shadowrunner whatevers? Back at your place?"

I could still feel myself shaking, and that little voice in my head dominated my thoughts, repeating those rabid denials of the situation over and over and over again. His voice just didn't register through the swirling haze. This was too much. I couldn't do this! He's in my head, fingers tightening around my mind. Everything I am, everything I was, everything I could be, he can see it all. It's wrong. It's wrong. This is all I have left. The only thing! I need to get him out. I need to get him out! Please, please, please, please, plea-

"Vic!"

All of a sudden, everything stops. The voice, my pounding heartrate, everything. All my awareness is taken up with the piercing blue eyes barely an inch away from mine. Nate reached up to gently run his thumb along my check. My breath hitched just as he was about to touch, but it went straight through my skin. My abusive, mercurial, son-of-a-bitch ex-husband gave me a small, sad smile full of terrifying levels of empathy. "You alright?"

I give him a rapid nod, and he backs off. "So, yeah. You downloaded something that night. Probably got it from my dad's company, right?"

I take a breath and give a clipped answer. "Juliet. She found files from a whistleblower. They worked for the Foundation."

He nodded. "Right. Thought so. Anyway. Yeah. Whatever you did woke me up. I just blinked and bam. I was in your head."

"But, how did..." Max asked, voice tentative. "How did you go from being alive to being an AI in your ex-wife's head?" Does she actually believe this... this bullshit! It can't be true.

Can it?

Nate shrugged. "No idea. Last thing I remember was looking up at this big, ugly frakking trog-" Chloe growled at the slight. "while he shot me in the head, then everything hurt and I was suddenly in your head being chased by the same damn troll. Everything went black again when you crashed the car, until last week in the Aztech complex." He grinned. "And let me tell you, I was frakking amazed to find you on a run there, babe. You were great. That thing with the gun and the vamp?" He leaned back slightly, almost talking to the ceiling instead of us. "So. Frakking. Hot."

I flushed at the comment, then shook my head to clear the embarassment. "Wait. What about the ring? You uploaded something to it?"

The face he made at my question... for the first time since I'd know him, Nate seemed almost... ashamed. "Uh, yeah. You remember when I proposed, and I put the film of-"

I rubbed a thumb absently over the ring as I gently breathe out the realisation. "You put the film of the proposal on it..." I looked up at him. "I'd forgotten about that."

"Yeah..." He rubbed the back of his neck again. "Well, I kind of deleted that before I died. Sorry." He rapidly moves on at my furious glare. "That thing there, it's a key now."

"A key to what..?"

Ah, Chloe. Asking the obvious questions, every time.

His smile broadened into a horrifically smug rictus of mocking pride. "Why, to the greatest treasure the world has ever seen, of course." He leaned in conspiratorially, his hands moving like a stage magician unveiling his grand finale. "The Hoard of a Great Dragon."

We stared for a long, quiet moment; the shocked silence was so palpable you could almost taste it on the air like a bad fart.

"Uh, sorry." Chloe waggled a long claw into her ear canal, pulling out an uncomfortably large gob of earwax that she flicked into the corner with a grimace. Kate made a face. "I thought you just said a frakking Dragon's Hoard."

"Yep." Nate grinned at all of us again. I could almost see the conniving twinkling twing of marketing trustworthiness from his teeth. "This, ladies and, uh, ladies, is the big score. This one is retirement money."

"Nate." The anger rose yet again, though this was tinged with exasperation. "What did you do?"

"Well, it was just there, and I felt like I was gonna-"

"Nate! What. Did. You. Do?!" I growled out each word, enunciating them into reality like the staccato cracks of gunshot. My inner voice crowed in satisfaction as he buckled, just a little, with each one.

He opened his mouth to respond, and I just knew he was going to try and pull some shit, so I jabbed a finger in his direction and yelled. Loudly. By the time my admonishing rant was over, Chloe and Max looked like they'd learnt several new insults and Nate had finally started to look cooperative. It was how his father had kept him on the leash.

He sighed. "I... I don't know."

"What are you talking about?"

"I don't know, okay! Like I said, last thing I remember was getting shot in the head. That's also pretty much all I frakking remember. I left work with a bunch of files - and that bitch Stacie on the desk said no to dinner again, by the way - went back to the apartment... and then the troll happened."

"So, uh... how do you know you have a frakking Dragon's Hoard out there to find?" Chloe asked, curiously.

He rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly, not meeting anyone's eye. "I maybe kind of stole it?"

If we weren't so shocked, the mouths of everyone in the room dropping open in near-instantaneous unison would've been comical. As it was, we were all far too distracted by what that idiot claimed to have done.

"You did what?"

"I, uh... yeah. Stole a Dragon's Hoard."

He's not lying. He really did that. He really broke the first frakking rule of this planet. Don't fuck with the wyrms.

Chloe's damn of tolerance burst and she began to laugh uncontrollably. I glared at her for a straight minute - she kept laughing anyway - before looking back to Nate with a growl. "Was it Lofwyr?"

He nodded, jerkily. "Yeah."

"Drek."

He nodded again. "Yeah."

I took a deep breath and started to talk through the summaries my mind was frantically making and analysing and readjusting. "Okay, so you stole Lofwyr's hoard somehow, then he sent a troll to kill you - and that means he came after me too, frakk - and he killed you and then you became an AI, but you have no idea how?"

"Yep. There're these gaps in my memory, like... like someone stole a bunch of the books of my life and I can actually feel them missing from the shelves in my head." He ran a hand through his hair and I didn't even smirk at his utter frustration.

Chloe chuckled. "A low-tech example from a suit like you? Frakk, Presc-dick, I'm impressed."

He snarled and made a rude hand gesture at her. She just chuckled harder.

My face began to spread into a slow, smug smile. This... this was what I was searching for. Exactly what I needed. That Dragon killed my husband - though he brought it on himself, idiot - and it took my home and my company and my people and now I can take the most valuable thing it owns. A Dragon's Hoard is rumoured to be millennia old, made up of collected artefacts, piled currency, and collated information. In the decades since the Awakening, nobody has ever found or stolen one. To be the first to do it and live?

That is a revenge worth burning the world for.

"Nate. What does this key open?" I held up the ring, still on the same chain around my neck it'd hung from since he died. "Specifically, I mean. Where and what is the lock?"

He shrugged. "Dunno. Memory gaps, remember?"

And there goes that plan. I knew this was too good to be true. "So, what you're saying is that you're entirely useless, then?"

He flashed me an affronted look. "No! No, no, not at all. What I'm saying is that I think I can find out. We need to check my apartment."

I opened my mouth to follow that lead up, but was interrupted by Max finally contributing to the conversation with the obvious question. "Your apartment? Why?"

"Because of-"

"Because of your stupid little diary, right?" Irritating thing. He was always writing in it. Therapist's orders, he claimed, the posturing prick.

He slunk forward from the doorway, muttering an annoyed "Journal. But, yeah. Unless you put it somewhere back at your place?"

I sighed. Again. Confirmation that this plan is going to be... difficult. More than I thought, despite going up against Lofwyr. "No. Your dad sold your apartment and everything in it except the Foundation's secrets."

Nathan whirled around, stared at me in utter horror. "He... sold my apartment?! Of frakking course he did, the bastard piece of drek, he'll rue the day he frakking-" I could see him building up along a crescendo of crazy, ranting and raving about his old man. I imagine that if he wasn't holographic, we'd all probably be covered in rabid spittle right about now.

I reached up to slap him, then had a thought.

I slapped myself.

Everyone in the room turned to look at me. Since that included Nate, I was fine with that. The pleasure of proving a theory also helped insulate some of the pain - I had a decent right slap-hook. Nate was downloaded directly into my head, right? That meant his AI program had to be somewhere inside my datajack, which was wired directly into my nervous system. All hundred billion neurons provided a pathway to his attention protocols, and as the slap connected and the pain began to spread, his programming would pick up on that signal and be unable to process anything else. The one pain at a time prioritisation rule was another vital neurological quirk for deckers to know. Came in very handy when dealing with the more... aggressive ICE programs.

"Yes, Nate, he sold your apartment. Get over it. We have more important things to worry about. What did you do with the diary?"

"It's a Journal! Chicks have diaries, men have journals. Stop that drek, Vic." He smirked. "Be nice." He shook his head and his eyes went distant. "Uh... well, I don't think I had it when the trog shot me, so it's probably still in the floor safe?"

My hand went straight to my temple and I began to rub in hopes of averting my incipient headache. I clamped down my jaw to contain the disbelieving cursing. Chloe had no such restraint. "You kept your diary in a frakking floor safe?"

"Journal!" Nate stamped his foot. "It's a frakking journal, how frakking hard is that to remember?"

"Not hard at all, Presc-dick." Chloe stopped, grinned. "Heh. Just like y-"

"Alright!" I held up a hand. "Later, Chloe. Where is this safe, Nate?"

"Under the-"

"Where under the damn floor?" I snapped. "Is it easy to find? Is it shielded? Could it still be there?"

He shrugged. "No idea. It was shielded, but the floor did blip" He demonstrated how much of a rise the safe made with an almost bollywood-style arm wave. "pretty frakking noticeably where it was, so whoever dad sold it to probably found it."

"He sold it to a small local subsidiary." They were so small as to be a veritable no-name, plus he'd used the sale to leverage a take-over barely a year later so they were just another part of the Prescott Foundation now. "It's an office space still, I think."

"They turned my home into a fucking office space? The frakking pricks..." Nate slumped, the most defeated I'd seen him in this entire conversation.

"Exactly. So, we need to know where the safe is. Can you tell us?"

He looked at us, almost askance. "Tell you?" His voice was indignant. Irritatingly so. "I'm coming with you, babe." His indignance vanished and he leered at me with a smirk, letting his eyes run up and down my body. Frakk, do I ever feel unclean. "You'd probably trigger some of the drek I installed in there without me. Wouldn't wanna get that pretty little ass of yours exploded now, would we?"

I took another deep breath. Calm, Victoria. Calm. You can't throttle him, anyway, and you've had too many knocks to the head already for that self-slapping method to be a practical consistent solution. "You can't come with us, Nate."

"Why not?"

"Because you're an AI created with some method previously unknown to anyone ever!" I may have been a little loud. "Because if anyone can see you, as they apparently can, letting you wander round is a recipe for getting every decker, sarariman, and gangster with any idea about anything on our case with everything they have! You're a thanatophobic researcher's literal wet dream, idiot!"

He blinked. "Oh. Well, if that's your problem..."

He vanished.

A few slow, shocked seconds passed, then he reappeared again. I barely noticed his smug grin as my mind raced through the newfound possibilities of this plan. "Problem solved?"

My mouth spread into a wide grin again, and this time it stayed there.

Chloe answered his presumably rhetorical question for me with a satisfied chuckle. "Oh yeah. Problem solved."

"So, you wan' my permission t'go on this... fools erran' to fin' some mysterious paydata that's s'pose t'be valuable to me?"

The lie was necessary. Nana was a smart woman and a canny operator, there's no way she'd let us go wandering off looking to go up against a dragon.

I bowed my head respectfully. "Yes, Nana. Our informant has a lot of information to provide, so we should be able to find it soon."

She stared up at me from her still obscenely ugly armchair, eyes crinkling as her gaze carefully assessed my sincerity, worth, chances of success, and a dozen other things I couldn't begin to guess at. There was a reason this woman scare- intimidated me. One doesn't pull a tiger by the tail, rather from a mile away with large calibre firearms.

After a painfully long moment, she nodded. "You will do this thing, an' you will bring this information back to me."

The 'or else' was left implied.

The three of us exchanged looks, wondering what to do now. We looked to Nana. She rolled her eyes and, with a haughty sniff and an irritated look, waved us out of the room.

We stood, out in the street, still looking blankly at each other. When it started to get uncomfortable, I took a long, deep breath and started walking. "Come on. It's a long trip to the apartment."

Chloe groaned. "Walking? Oh drek..."

[END OF ACT I]

AN1 - This was something I was both incredibly sure and immensely unsure about. To my mind, any relationship with Nathan in his canon game state would've ended abusively, no doubt about it - but with Victoria's... attitudes, she might've ended up just as much of a contributor to that dynamic. They're bad for each other, but they're also the person who knows the other best in the world.

We as a society tend to view abuse - and bullying, on a less severe but still relevant level - as something quite one-sided and simple. One person with the power imposing their will on another without. It often is that simple, but not always, and that's part of what I'm trying to work through and examine in this story. To me the underlying reasons for why the abusers abuse and the bullies bully and the origins for those reasons are as interesting as helping the victims past the trauma and to build themselves up to be stronger. Making Victoria and Nathan both hella toxic for one another, but still the main (and possibly only) source of stability they each have, lets me look at both of those things at the same time. Cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of fate and all that.