by Hugo Huesca
Contents
CHAPTER ONE The Antarctic Report
CHAPTER TWO Script Kiddie
CHAPTER THREE The Ferals
CHAPTER FOUR Kipp
CHAPTER FIVE The Patel Situation
CHAPTER SIX Rune
CHAPTER SEVEN Pro Gaming
CHAPTER EIGHT Translight in a Bottle
CHAPTER NINE Tactical Retreat
CHAPTER TEN Toxic Adventure
CHAPTER ELEVEN Keygen
CHAPTER TWELVE Showdown on Sludge
CHAPTER THIRTEEN I'm sorry, mister bus
CHAPTER FOURTEEN The Nordic Study
CHAPTER FIFTEEN Getting the band back together
CHAPTER SIXTEEN Blissful Farming
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Janus Station
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Shade
CHAPTER NINETEEN Shipyard
CHAPTER TWENTY Captured
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE Nordic
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO Siege
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE Paladin Defense Force
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR Dogfight
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE Rune Universe
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX Script Kiddie
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN The Antarctic Report
Copyright © By Hugo Huesca. All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction.
Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business,
events, or locales, is purely coincidental.
Thank you for reading my book. Please consider leaving a review wherever you bought
the book, or perhaps tell your friends about it.
Thank you so much for your support.
-Hugo Huesca
To Juan and Willy, who have been there since the beginning.
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Rising CIA John Derry has been tasked to find the mysterious man behind the murder of Senator Morrow before his murder goes public.
To do so, he must recruit the help of David Terrance, formerly one of the best hackers in the world.
With the promise of regaining his freedom and the chance of getting his family back together, David Terrance must follow
the lead of a mysterious hacker, all the while battling with a sickness that makes him doubt his grasp on reality.
Stakes run high when the bodies start to pile up. Can David find the killer before it's too late? Or will he lose his
sanity and even his life in the process?
The only thing he knows for sure is that things are not what they look like...
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CHAPTER ONE
The Antarctic Report
There were only two people in the room. The first was the former CIA Director and the second was The Woman.
She had no official rank. Her gray suit wasn’t expensive. If you read her job description, you would find a cozy bureaucratic position that involved signing obscure trading laws related to taxes overseas. She was in her mid-thirties, had pale blond hair, and aside from her cold eyes she looked like any young mother you could find in a junior soccer game.
Yet, if you somehow avoided the heavy layers of security of her bedroom, you would find an encrypted phone line connected straight to a famous office inside the White House.
Her name was Stefania Caputi. She had the nagging suspicion the CIA was losing its touch.
“So you made me trek across the world for a videogame, John?” she asked the man. She used the kind of tone people took with a special-needs child. She raised a perfectly trimmed eyebrow at him. The Director shivered at her disapproval and hoped she wouldn’t notice. When sharks smelled blood in the water…
“Ma’am, we’ve reasons to believe this is a matter of national security.”
“You mean the Antarctica dossier.” It was not a question. The dossier was classified to hell and back: only the top government officials could access it. Yet he wasn’t surprised when she showed knowledge of it. Her job, after all, involved knowing things. The Woman was damned good at it.
“Yes, the blasted dossier,” he confirmed.
“I thought you took care of that leak?”
“That was an accident, despite what others would believe,” he said. Then he shrugged. “But, yes, the leaks were plugged. Accident or not.”
It was her turn to shrug. “Then you shouldn’t have any problems, John. Unless you got sloppy in your job.”
“If you thought that, I’d be out of a job already, ma’am. There is no leak. And yet this game…”
“Is just like any other game in the market, right? Kids have been toying with Virtual Reality Systems for years now. The military loves it. They are very interested in the socio-political data they are getting from games like this. I believe they value it at a trillion dollars.”
She’s probing me, thought the Director.
Rune Universe was no game, no matter what people said.
“Ma’am, I’ll be frank with you, the same data structure we found in Antarctica can be found in this game. We believe that’s intentional.”
“You think the Patel’s were traitors?” Stefania Caputi hadn’t blinked since they began talking. It was eerie. Like she wasn’t human at all.
“Well, we can’t ask them, can we?” The Director shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. The signal is there. We believe it’s an informational bomb. We have reasons to believe the Key to the payload is in a third party possession. It could surface at any time.”
“And…?”
The Director took a deep breath.
“I want you to stop blocking the CIA attempts to close Rune Universe, ma’am. We need to keep the public out of that software before something terrible happens.”
“I see. And by that, you mean, someone else gets access to this ‘bomb’ before you can.”
Shame made the Director’s face flush with shame. “The States have many enemies, Madam Caputi. My job is to ensure the survival of society as we know it.”
“Ah, of course, that must be it.” Stefania Caputi was ready to finish the conversation.
“Will you give my recommendation to the President?”
“Dear John, of course I won’t.”
The Director recoiled as if struck.
“What do you mean? This is a matter of national security—”
“You may have spent too much time as head of the CIA. It may be a matter of national security. But security isn’t the be-all end-all of a country. Much less for the States,” Stefania Caputi took out a nano-USB from the pocket of her suit and placed it on top of the holo-projector installed in the middle of the table. “I’m talking Power, John. With a capital ‘P.’ A country that has true Power has no need to chase security. No one could dare attack it. That’s why the President hasn’t been answering your calls. He has been busy talking to me.”
“You knew…” The Director’s anger was now enough to overcome his fear of The Woman on his own. “You do not understand what you are risking…”
“I think I have a fairly better idea than you do,” said Stefania Caputi. The holo-projector processed the archives of her USB and displayed them. It rendered a 3D figure that occupied the whole space atop the conference table. Thousands of red data nodes connected to each other with blazing red lines. “This is the cluster representation of Rune Universe, launch version. So far, the Company that owns the servers hasn’t done any server maintenance. No updates. Nothing. And yet…”
; The image changed. The data spiderweb grew more complex, its borders outgrew the frontiers of the table. After a moment, the holo-projector did a panoramic view over it to better showcase its size.
“One year after launch, Rune Universe has a software-build twice as advanced, John,” Stefania Caputi said.
The Director couldn’t believe it. Stefania Caputi’s associates had hidden the new software version from his organization and frozen any advances towards the matter. He had suspected it was a military ploy to preserve its valuable data source, but now…
“It’s a virus—”
“You are not authorized to categorize it as anything. But no, this is no virus, dear John. This is not a ‘bomb’ either. A bomb is something you use once and then forget it. You are looking at a deterrent. This is something we point and shoot every damn time we please. We must own it.”
The Woman withdrew the nano-USB and walked towards the door. Only the clicking of her heels was heard in the room. The Director didn’t stop her. Then she turned around:
“Next time you ask to speak to the President, know we are both in agreement on this. If you won’t cooperate, then don’t interfere. Otherwise, I’m afraid I won’t guarantee your continued employment.”
She left with that, leaving the Director frustrated and defeated. He was hired to protect his country from danger. Now his country walked foolishly towards a greater threat than the Corps Wars of 2033. And that Woman was responsible.
He slumped over his chair, thinking of a vengeance he knew he would never be able to pull off.
There was something that could’ve given him some comfort if he had known about it. Something that had escaped both himself and Stefania Caputi. It was this: they were both wrong about Rune Universe.
It was no weapon. It was no bomb. Yet, it was dangerous, and it could change humanity as they knew it.
CHAPTER TWO
Script Kiddie
Let’s get this out of the way: buying Scripts in the darknet is illegal. Using them is even more illegal. Using them to steal the usernames and passwords of San Mabrada’s City Council is way more illegal than that.
That’s why I was sitting on the stairs outside the Kerbal Library in the middle of a storm, shivering. I felt the raindrops smash against my jacket and the cold seep into my bones with every gust of icy wind. My nose was red and runny and my fingers were numb. Trying to tap into the keyboard of my burner Berry computer was like attempting to play the piano with ten finger-sized tree-branches.
If you want to do something very illegal, you do it far away from home. That’s common sense in Lower Cañitas District, where young men like me wear their Strikes as symbols of status. So I went to the library. It was a nice spot, closed because of the storm, and the rain was as effective as a gray curtain in guaranteeing my privacy. Also, it had free WiFi.
The cold and the threat of sickness later on was well worth it. A City Council password can be more useful to an imaginative mind than to the councilmen themselves, even if they change it two or three hours after the leak is detected. That meant there were enough imaginative minds willing to pay me for my troubles, and that made those troubles no trouble at all.
I finished the configuration of my personal hacking OS, set with the Council intranet in sight. That was step one of three.
I know very little real hacking myself, and I am not ashamed to admit I couldn’t hack my way into my own personal blog if my life depended on it. Beauty is, I don’t have to. The Hack OS I used only set me back twenty dollars. I made that amount back on my first digital break-in. The software does all the heavy lifting for me. It’s like a gun that aims itself while I look for cover and hide. The only thing I have to do is make sure it’s loaded.
The Script I had in my back pocket was the bullet. Like hunting a monster, you have to make sure you have the right tools for the job; silver for werewolves and garlic for a vampire. I hunted databases. Different sites run different security measures, so before each job I had to go and get the right Script.
I held the tiny nano-USB chip between my fingers and carefully loaded it into the Berry. As it unpacked and the progress bar filled, I thought of the month’s payments I was going to make in a couple hours. I might even secure some extra hours of home-heating if I budgeted right. Sounded like heaven.
Some heating, a warm meal, and spare cash to fight off the debt collectors hounding the neighborhood. Not bad for a two-hour-job.
The Script finished unpacking and I loaded it into the application. I had only one shot at this, since the nano-USB the Script came in formatted itself just after the unpacking was complete —this was my last stick with the Script loaded, any more and I’d need to pay a visit to my dealer.
By adding an auto-erasing feature, the Script creator protected his identity from the police if a careless Script Kiddie messed up and left a USB lying around after a break-in. I suspected those hackers were the ones making real bank, and with none of the risks I took. Smart guys.
Loading the Script was step two. Step three would be pressing the “start” button and waiting until the software was done and the usernames and passwords were safely stored inside a small portable hard-drive next to my Berry.
I realized something was wrong just as my finger hovered over the button to start the process. I froze and studied the screen.
The Hack OS needed to be connected to the Internet to work. It had to show the incoming connections as well as the outgoing ones. Most of the time you get publicity bots trying to get enough metadata for their targeted ads. Other times it was a person. Hence the burner Berry computer, to be discarded in the nearest dumpster as soon as the work was done. To the bare-bones user interface, it looked like a string of I.P addresses flashing in and out of a corner display every half a minute. The bots simply came, took a look at the net usage, found nothing interesting or marketable, and left.
But the I.P address I saw flash on the screen as I was about to start the hack had already been around two separate times.
I cursed in a whisper and the storm hid my words even from my ears. I stood up and looked at both ends of the street. Maybe I had enough time to slither off into a back-alley…
Sometimes you get a police bot in the small traffic influx of the net. The Hack OS search is one of their priorities. Remember, Scripts are highly illegal.
Most of the time the OS detected the bot and deleted itself from your burner computer before it registered on the police archives. But when the bot slipped by the firmware…
Even across the curtain of rain, I heard the sirens and a moment later I saw them, coming at me in a blur. No point on running now, it was an automated police-car. You could try running from one, of course, as they were programmed to arrest non-violent criminals. But sometimes they malfunctioned. You could get splattered under their wheels as they chased after you and pleaded with you to surrender peacefully.
I didn’t feel like placing my life in the hands of drones. Drones programmed by public contractors, at that.
But I had to do something or I would go to prison.
“No way a judge strikes me for this one,” I muttered to myself as the drone got closer and closer. I had about twenty seconds of freedom left before my inevitable arrest. And, as I said, using a Script to steal the account data of the City Council was super illegal. Government tampering, aggravated. No judge would allow the Strike System to cover for it, not in a million years. It would be jail time for me, and Sis would have to fend for herself for five to ten years.
I grabbed the Berry and stabbed at it with my wet, numb fingers as quickly as I could without getting careless; a typo in this situation literally meant jail-time. My heart beat furiously inside my chest, threatening to make me lose my calm. I finished typing and struck the “start” button hard, just as the drone pulled by the sidewalk in front of me. I threw the Berry to the floor one second before the robotic authority ordered me to do so from a speaker so powerful it dwarfed the storm.
YOU HAVE BEEN I
MPLICATED IN AN ILLEGAL SOFTWARE SITUATION. STEPPING AWAY FROM THE HACKING DEVICE IS IN YOUR BEST INTEREST, AS IT WILL BE CONSIDERED AN ACT OF COMPLIANCE BY A JUDGE.
Its onboard camera registered enough distance had been achieved between me and the computer and the back door in front of me opened upwards with a hiss, like an automated limo arriving to pick up a teenager and get him to prom.
The drone blared again.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION. ALL COMPLIANCE WILL BE RECORDED AND MEASURED AGAINST YOUR CRIME, AS WILL BE ALL RESISTANCE. PLEASE, UNDER THE PUBLIC SELF-REGULATION ACT OF 2034, PROCEED TO PLACE YOURSELF UNDER ARREST.
And it stood there, looking at me expectantly with its little high definition camera.
“Van is going to kill me,” I thought. Yeah, I had promised Mom and Sis I was going to behave. Too late for that, though. And taking my time to obey a direct command would be seen as contempt by some judges.
So I walked down the stairs with a brisk pace and stepped inside the drone. There, I was under arrest. The door closed after me. It wasn’t locked.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION, it repeated at me, in a lower volume that came from the inside. TRIP TO THE CAÑITAS POLICE DEPARTMENT IS BEGINNING NOW. CURRENT COURSE IS CALCULATED TO TAKE THIRTEEN MINUTES; DO YOU WANT TO SUGGEST AN ALTERNATE ROUTE?
“No, this one is fine,” I said. I reclined myself on the seat, looked at the drone’s roof, and sighed.
THERE ARE WATER BOTTLES ON THE BACKSEAT COMPARTMENT, the drone offered. It began the trip to the Police Department, driving itself right at the speed limit.
A small flying drone would come for my burner computer five minutes later or so, braving the storm with cold software courage, and would bring it to the Department as evidence. Meanwhile, lying on the stairs with its screen cracked, the Berry was in the process of hacking the shit out of the poor databases of the Kerbal Public Library itself.
