The shadows wrapped around her as she perched on top of one of the blue lit buildings that overlooked the heart of the town; a town that she had helped to build and now was failing at protecting. Whomever had started sending in agents to the Void had some very proficient coders and they had been testing the defenses all over the city and the outlying areas. There was no law enforcement in the Void, just a bunch of extremely intelligent beings that were deadly protective on this haven they had built.
She had her Puck avatar on, as she always did when she was here and a half a dozen protective programs running but she still felt as if someone was watching her as she sat there; a tingling sensation between her shoulder blades that just wouldn?t go away. This was her turf though and she wasn?t about to be frightened off by the possibility that someone might be watching. Later she had a meeting scheduled with Stickfigure, a prominent member of the community to discuss merging a few of the defense points to make them stronger. His domain bumped up against her own and it seemed a good move considering the success of the past few attacks on other peoples estates.
There was movement below, that was expected and the data points of identity were all approved. Like most of the domains she had several bars, a club, a few arcades within her borders; all places where you could go and, for a small fee, enjoy a privacy level that was difficult to reproduce randomly in the Void. That privacy was guaranteed by her, by Puck, and if anything was to occur on her watch it would quickly mean vultures swooping in to crush her defenses and try to claim the prime real estate as their own. It had taken her three years to get this domain and it had come at a price, one she?d been willing to pay but perhaps not again. No, she wouldn?t allow this place to be taken from her, not without a lot of pain and suffering.
It had been quiet for hours and her thoughts began to wander to reviewing her meeting with Cooper. She wasn?t about to call it a date because it was pretty inept if it was so she was going to just name it hanging out with a potential friend. She was a hell of a lot better at scripting defensive programs against malicious attacks than she was at just having a normal conversation. Oh, she could go all witty sarcasm on a person, one of the many reasons she chose Puck as her avatar, but an honest conversation about personal things? It was laughable how bad she was at that.
The alert shook her from lingering too long on that failure, it was coming from the North end, somewhere in Showmans territory. They had all come to a temporary, if somewhat uncomfortable, agreement that any attacks that were aimed at the core of the city defenses would be monitored by all the Kingpings -- yes, Kingpings, it was a geek thing that amused them all and so it stuck.
A macro later and she was at street level, her bike morphing up from the sleek black of the ?street? for her use. It was fast, silent and could do things no real motorcycle could do, she had taken six months to program it. The base program had taken only a few days but the features she?d added on had been built over the rest of the time and she thought every single hour spent on it was well worth the effort. It got her from where she?d been to the site of the alert in under a minute. Pulling up in front of a tall building, the windows blacked out, it looked abandoned but she knew it was a nightclub. The Showman hadn?t given it a permanent name, opting to change it nightly to reflect a theme, tonight there were neon letters that proclaimed that this was ?Oooo Wilde? a play on Oscar Wilde she thought.
It was too quiet for the time and place, there should still have been people wandering through to get to the club but she couldn?t see anyone. She couldn't quite tell where the alert came from, it was somewhere in this area but she couldn?t see any corruption in the base code. ?What the he--? Was as far as she got before something heavy and fast struck her from behind. It sent her off the bike and into the front window with enough force to shatter it on impact. Shards of it showered her, her baseline defenses keeping out the majority of the debris. A sharp pain in her side told her that something got through and when she looked down she could see a shard of glass protruding from her side; three inches of it was visible and from the pain she thought maybe three was embedded in her flesh and the muscle beneath. Despite the pain it brought she scrambled back and down, crouching and scanning the room for whatever, or whomever, had been the projectile.
Jacks was on watch that night and monitoring Summer as she did whatever it was she did in her Void. She had taken him there once and that had been more than enough for the man that was born in Victorian England and had a distaste for modern things. Standing in a corner, his arms crossed over his chest he looked like a statue, an unhappy statue. When her body jerked he paused, he?d seen this before when something happened in the Void, it wasn?t necessarily cause for alarm. Then a bloom of blood appeared on the left side of her shirt and she made a strangled noise of pain.
?Damn it, Summer.? He growled as he moved forward, his hand reaching for the keyboard at her right, something that was there in case of such an emergency. He typed in the command that would forcefully disconnect her from the Void, it was something he wasn?t supposed to do unless it was urgent, and the amount of blood he saw seemed about as urgent as he was willing to let it get.
In the Void the disconnect command was like a bolt of lightning striking twice, the pain it caused was translated to a scream as her body twisted, all her muscles given a command to move at once. Blue eyes snapped open, and they fixed an angry glare on Jacks, focusing all that pain on something more productive, like rage. ?What the hell, Jacks? I told you never to do...? The words cut off and another wave of pain stole her attention, one hand moved to her side and she finished the sentence with a groan and an ?Ow.?
?Move your hand, I need to see the wound.? He commanded and she complied without thinking, her hand had been coated with blood in that short time and her mind felt fuzzy. It was a deep gash, the object that caused it was nowhere to be seen, injuries from the Void were like that though. Summer had tried to explain it to Jacks but none of it made any sense so he just accepted that injuries in the Void, inflicted by a skilled enough hacker meant real physical, or psychological, injury. ?You?re going to need stitches. Hold this against the wound.? One hand reached and pulled his shirt off for her to press against the wound. ?I?m going to get a bandage, I think I can do something good enough that we will be able to get you over to Docs house.?
?Oh good, then Grumpy and Doc will be there, we going to invite all the other dwarves?? It was a jab at his demeanor and he followed up as he exited the room to get the medkit. ?Why not, after all, I will be driving Miss Dopey there.? She would have laughed if she wasn?t in pain, it wasn?t so bad, a few stitches and some pain meds would get her up and around in no time. She?d have to go back into the Void, probably later that night with Jacks protesting the whole while, but that attack couldn?t go without response, or without punishment. No one messed with her in the Void without quick retribution, she would make these shadowy figures know the truth of that sooner rather than later.
She had her Puck avatar on, as she always did when she was here and a half a dozen protective programs running but she still felt as if someone was watching her as she sat there; a tingling sensation between her shoulder blades that just wouldn?t go away. This was her turf though and she wasn?t about to be frightened off by the possibility that someone might be watching. Later she had a meeting scheduled with Stickfigure, a prominent member of the community to discuss merging a few of the defense points to make them stronger. His domain bumped up against her own and it seemed a good move considering the success of the past few attacks on other peoples estates.
There was movement below, that was expected and the data points of identity were all approved. Like most of the domains she had several bars, a club, a few arcades within her borders; all places where you could go and, for a small fee, enjoy a privacy level that was difficult to reproduce randomly in the Void. That privacy was guaranteed by her, by Puck, and if anything was to occur on her watch it would quickly mean vultures swooping in to crush her defenses and try to claim the prime real estate as their own. It had taken her three years to get this domain and it had come at a price, one she?d been willing to pay but perhaps not again. No, she wouldn?t allow this place to be taken from her, not without a lot of pain and suffering.
It had been quiet for hours and her thoughts began to wander to reviewing her meeting with Cooper. She wasn?t about to call it a date because it was pretty inept if it was so she was going to just name it hanging out with a potential friend. She was a hell of a lot better at scripting defensive programs against malicious attacks than she was at just having a normal conversation. Oh, she could go all witty sarcasm on a person, one of the many reasons she chose Puck as her avatar, but an honest conversation about personal things? It was laughable how bad she was at that.
The alert shook her from lingering too long on that failure, it was coming from the North end, somewhere in Showmans territory. They had all come to a temporary, if somewhat uncomfortable, agreement that any attacks that were aimed at the core of the city defenses would be monitored by all the Kingpings -- yes, Kingpings, it was a geek thing that amused them all and so it stuck.
A macro later and she was at street level, her bike morphing up from the sleek black of the ?street? for her use. It was fast, silent and could do things no real motorcycle could do, she had taken six months to program it. The base program had taken only a few days but the features she?d added on had been built over the rest of the time and she thought every single hour spent on it was well worth the effort. It got her from where she?d been to the site of the alert in under a minute. Pulling up in front of a tall building, the windows blacked out, it looked abandoned but she knew it was a nightclub. The Showman hadn?t given it a permanent name, opting to change it nightly to reflect a theme, tonight there were neon letters that proclaimed that this was ?Oooo Wilde? a play on Oscar Wilde she thought.
It was too quiet for the time and place, there should still have been people wandering through to get to the club but she couldn?t see anyone. She couldn't quite tell where the alert came from, it was somewhere in this area but she couldn?t see any corruption in the base code. ?What the he--? Was as far as she got before something heavy and fast struck her from behind. It sent her off the bike and into the front window with enough force to shatter it on impact. Shards of it showered her, her baseline defenses keeping out the majority of the debris. A sharp pain in her side told her that something got through and when she looked down she could see a shard of glass protruding from her side; three inches of it was visible and from the pain she thought maybe three was embedded in her flesh and the muscle beneath. Despite the pain it brought she scrambled back and down, crouching and scanning the room for whatever, or whomever, had been the projectile.
Jacks was on watch that night and monitoring Summer as she did whatever it was she did in her Void. She had taken him there once and that had been more than enough for the man that was born in Victorian England and had a distaste for modern things. Standing in a corner, his arms crossed over his chest he looked like a statue, an unhappy statue. When her body jerked he paused, he?d seen this before when something happened in the Void, it wasn?t necessarily cause for alarm. Then a bloom of blood appeared on the left side of her shirt and she made a strangled noise of pain.
?Damn it, Summer.? He growled as he moved forward, his hand reaching for the keyboard at her right, something that was there in case of such an emergency. He typed in the command that would forcefully disconnect her from the Void, it was something he wasn?t supposed to do unless it was urgent, and the amount of blood he saw seemed about as urgent as he was willing to let it get.
In the Void the disconnect command was like a bolt of lightning striking twice, the pain it caused was translated to a scream as her body twisted, all her muscles given a command to move at once. Blue eyes snapped open, and they fixed an angry glare on Jacks, focusing all that pain on something more productive, like rage. ?What the hell, Jacks? I told you never to do...? The words cut off and another wave of pain stole her attention, one hand moved to her side and she finished the sentence with a groan and an ?Ow.?
?Move your hand, I need to see the wound.? He commanded and she complied without thinking, her hand had been coated with blood in that short time and her mind felt fuzzy. It was a deep gash, the object that caused it was nowhere to be seen, injuries from the Void were like that though. Summer had tried to explain it to Jacks but none of it made any sense so he just accepted that injuries in the Void, inflicted by a skilled enough hacker meant real physical, or psychological, injury. ?You?re going to need stitches. Hold this against the wound.? One hand reached and pulled his shirt off for her to press against the wound. ?I?m going to get a bandage, I think I can do something good enough that we will be able to get you over to Docs house.?
?Oh good, then Grumpy and Doc will be there, we going to invite all the other dwarves?? It was a jab at his demeanor and he followed up as he exited the room to get the medkit. ?Why not, after all, I will be driving Miss Dopey there.? She would have laughed if she wasn?t in pain, it wasn?t so bad, a few stitches and some pain meds would get her up and around in no time. She?d have to go back into the Void, probably later that night with Jacks protesting the whole while, but that attack couldn?t go without response, or without punishment. No one messed with her in the Void without quick retribution, she would make these shadowy figures know the truth of that sooner rather than later.