In the center of Upper Canterlot sat a tall gleaming white structure lit by fluorescent lighting, ponies in pure white and gold jumpsuits came and went happily from the tower, things were calm and serene despite the heavy presence of security throughout the steel and concrete of its surroundings.
This tower was the corporate HQ of Equi-Tech, a major player in the consumer technology market and one of the most secure facilities in the nation.
High above street level five ponies sat around a large ebony black conference table, each one more angry than the last along with a stunned and deflated Net Ops ponies.
“Someone tell me precisely what the fuck happened, how did your department manage to let not one but TWO intruders through!” a white coated and blond maned stallion growled.
“Mr Bright Sun, sir. We don’t know. X9 must have done it on it’s own, we didn’t detect any outside connections before it was too late.” an utterly terrified jump-suited pony answered.
“Might I interject for a moment? You’re going to give yourself a hemorrhage if you keep this up, Bright Sun.” a pony with an orange coat and curly red mane and tail said calmly.
The jumpsuit wearing pony and his colleagues took this chance to flee from the room while they weren’t being watched, not wanting to another grilling from their completely furious boss.
Bright Sun took a few calming breaths before speaking again. “Grim Dawn, Altered Delight and Carbon Rod. As you’ve just heard I’ve called you here to discuss… an issue we’ve faced. One of the experimental AIs has gone rogue and transmitted an unknown quantity of data to an outside source.”
Grim Dawn was a charcoal gray Bat pony with a rough and messy scarlet mane and tail, her cutie mark was a black cloud. “Have you located these pests yet? It can’t have been hard.”
“That was my question too, Bright Sun.” Altered Delight spoke with a sultry tone, she was a Pegasus with a yellow coat and cerulean mane and tail with a pill bottle cutie mark.
“I can assure you we are doing everything in our power to…”
“Clearly you aren’t, do we have to pull our support for your little scheme?” barked Carbon Rod, he was a Unicorn with a silver coat and a black mane and tail with a black diamond cutie mark.
“T- That wont be necessary.” Bright Sun stammered.
The orange pony stepped away from the window with a smirk and faced the conference table. “Before we get down to business, I want to introduce myself to you all, since we’ll be working together very closely indeed.”
“Do tell. Mister?” Carbon Rod said with suspicion.
“Riot. You may call me Riot.”
“What is your affiliation? I can’t say I’ve seen you before at any meetings.”
Riot smirked. “I represent an interested party that has a habit of meddling in your internal affairs for personal gain, to your benefit of course. I have ways of making your enemies quite literally vanish, it’s something of a specialty of mine.”
They nod in approval after some moments of silence.
Grim Dawn raised his hoof and pointed it at Riot with a stern look. “Bright Sun trusts you, so we trust you, at least for now. How do you intend on finding our breach?”
Riot laughs a deep cackling laugh. “We find out who we are dealing with, dabble in some infiltration and shall we say, replacement, of those troublesome elements.”
“Oh I see. You’re one of those kinds of ponies. You pick some interesting company indeed Bright Sun, I hope you know what you’re doing.”
Bright Sun cleared his throat in an attempt to redirect attention back on himself.
“Now that Riot has introduced himself let’s get down to it. As you know, Prototype X9-01-A has decided to make a poor decision, it transmitted highly classified data to an outside destination. We believe it attempted to contact this outside influence for some time until someone or something answered its call.”
“Any idea where it sent our secrets?” Grim Dawn questioned as he looked over his glasses.
“We tracked the signal to a specific net cafe in the sprawl, by the name of Chilled Coffee. While the intruders were indeed very skilled and managed to hide who they were specifically, they didn’t account for the fact they weren’t very subtle while breaking in.”
“You had better be sure, if you send a team and you’re wrong they WILL vanish.”
“You forget we have the best in the market working on this. I’ll leave this one down to you, Riot.” Bright Sun said with exasperation as he gestured to an amused Riot.
He let a freakish grin spread across his face. “Say no more, I’ll send my team in and we’ll find out precisely who was there at the time.”
“Consider cutting X9’s connection to the net for now as well. It can’t be trusted and neither can its fellows.” Carbon Rod stated as he glared at Bright Sun.
“Was the data encrypted?” Altered Delight questioned.
Bright Sun nodded. “Yes, they aren’t cracking it. I assure you.”
Nobody believed that, it was only a matter of time before the data was decrypted. They had to act fast and with so little to work on, things weren’t in their favor.
“You know as well as I do that whoever has it will eventually find a way. I want a full report on my desk by the end of today, Bright Sun. You really screwed up big time.” Grim Dawn growled.
Grim Dawn, Altered Delight and Carbon rod get up and vacate the room leaving Bright Sun to himself, he began to sweat profusely as he pressed an intercom button on his desk.
“Lavender, get me a full report of the breach and be quick about it. Deliver copies to Grim Dawn, Altered Delight and Carbon Rod too.”
“That’s odd.” Scarlet mused.
Access’ ears perked up and he walked up behind her. “What is?”
“One of the files here. It’s not as protected as it should be.” Scarlet said as she jabbed a hoof at the file in question.
“Not as big either, it’s almost a quarter of the size.”
Access hummed to himself. “A file index maybe? I mean there are a lot of files here and it’d make some sense.”
“That seems the most likely to me.” Scarlet added.
“Can I leave it to you, there’s something I need to take care of.” Access responded as he stared at the clock in his vision.
Scarlet nodded. “That’s what we’re here for.”
Access walked away from the desks and towards a small seating area where most of the belongings he and Sheet had brought with them were sat, in his pack was that bottle of white oblong pills he’d been taking for a few months now.
He pulled the tube out of his pack and shook a single pill out into his magic and stared at it in disgust, the pill floated into his mouth and as he swallowed it, he screwed up his face at the bitter and chalky taste which made him cough roughly.
Bulwark gave Access a concerned look. “You good over there?”
“Yeah. I’m fine.”
“Then you can help me out over here. I need your input on a few things, wont take a moment I promise.”
Access rolled his eyes and made his way over to Bulwark and pulled up a seat. Progress was very slow and it was looking more and more likely that they wouldn’t be able to decrypt this data any time soon, not without some major help.