“They’re on the move.”
“Good, we can’t stay here.” Access remarked, stepping over the shattered remains of an anti-system program, one of many that found its way to them. “Can’t be a sysop on our ass if this many programs are tracking us, something’s directing them.”
“Fry this terminal.” Sheet Rock remarked, standing well back. “Make it quick, scans say there’s anti-personnel programs on the way, brain-wipes.”
Accessed assembled a cartoonishly stylized bomb from stray code and made a show of placing it on the terminal, as if ask if it met her standards or not. Sheet Rock disliked wasting precious processing cycles on making fancy ICONs for a program, but if it got Access to put some effort in then she’d allow it.
No sooner than when she finished that thought, Access’ program detonated and wiped the terminal from the face of the subnet, leaving a small crater in the floor, and interestingly, a hole in the wall through which they could see another set of hallways.
“Guess this our way out.” Access chuckled. “Can’t go back, may as well go forward.”
“Already tried jacking out, didn’t work, obviously.” Sheet Rock grumbled. “Backup’s probably not coming either.”
The two runners jumped through the hole in the wall one after another and made themselves scarce down the first hallway they saw. Soon after, anti-personnel programs primed and ready to end them flooded the area they’d just left and began a search pattern.
Arcology Sysops would’ve figured out that they’d given them the slip the moment the search turned up nothing, and would need to fall back to the old-fashioned method of detection programs and resident Netrunners to find them.
While Access preferred to simply remove their pursuers from the board so to speak, Sheet Rock reminded him that destroying a program would alert the system and its sysops to their rough location.
“Call me crazy, but I don’t think those were for us.”
“Aren’t going psycho on me are you?” Sheet Rock grunted. “Because I could’ve sworn I heard you say we weren’t just about to get the business end of some Black ICE.”
“Seems to me like you’re the one with a problem.” Access retorted. “Since when do programs belonging to the system they’re in have trouble with code gates that, may I add, are also theirs?”
“Could be due to the glitching, it wouldn’t be unusual for that to be the case.”
“It feels like we’re talking in circles here.”
It felt like an eternity had passed since their last communication with Phantom’s team. Giving out orders to them, Matterhorn especially, seemed like little more than stating the obvious, since they were all well aware of what needed to be done.
It still didn’t stop Sheet Rock from peering at the camera feeds whenever she had the chance though.
Commonly shared intel suggested the halls between different sections of the system were filled with traps, but as with all information regarding the Arcology and its security there was a certain amount of doubt and skepticism involved.
“You wont guess what’s blocking our way now.” Access chuckled from up ahead. “Did you bring your climbing gear by chance?”
“What do you mean…” Sheet Rock said before trailing off. “Oh…”
In front of them was a sheer drop straight into the dark abyss below where there seemed to be no observable bottom, only an unending and dreadful free fall into absolute nothingness.
While the thought of falling into that abyss was about as unpleasant as could be expected, the “horizon” wasn’t much better. It was little more than dense fog and darkness, stretching into infinity.
“Looks like we aren’t going any farther.”
“Phantom never finished bridging the public and private subnets, so who knows how we’re crossing this.”
“The fact we’re here at all implies that she did, right?” Access retorted. “What if this is the boundary between the two?”
“Normally I’d say you’re mad and to take your meds, but I’m willing to at least entertain the thought.” Sheet Rock admitted, peering over the edge. “Seeing that the alternative is sitting here, waiting to get killed.”
Access conjured a gem of light from his hoof, affectionately called a “Breadcrumb” program by independent and corporate Netrunners alike. It didn’t do anything special, or bombastic, but what it did let you do was leave a persistent trail that could take whatever form you wanted it to, wherever you went.
It didn’t explain how he intended to use it though, as the only paths were back where they came, or down into the abyss. Sheet Rock watched intently as Access walked to the edge, between two metal textured pillars, and threw one of the rocks a short distance away.
She expected it to just fall straight off the edge, but instead it bounced on some unseen surface and clattered to a stop against another surface, possibly a wall.
“No!” Sheet Rock protested. “No way in hell!”
Invisible, but still present.
“Seems safe enough.” Access remarked as he stepped back. “I’d bet a crisp hundred eurobit note that this would be visible if Phantom had finished what she was doing.”
“The net doesn’t work like that, it’s obviously a trap of some kind.”
“Slow or faulty connections often manifest as half-formed, glitched, or outright invisible geometry.” Access pointed out. “When she got an overload to the brain, the cables she was messing with might’ve gotten damaged as well.”
“I can’t deny the logic follows, but there’s nothing on the other side to get to, look for yourself.”
Sheet Rock pointed out into the distance at the fog in an attempt to accentuate her point. It hadn’t gone anywhere, not that there was any chance of that changing at all, but Access was determined to press on regardless of the danger ahead.
Access’ hotheadedness would get him in trouble someday, but Sheet Rock watched as he stepped fully over the edge, half-expecting him to fall despite the evidence to the contrary.
He stepped down onto an unseen surface, which started to flicker around the spots his hooves met the floor. With little regard for his safety, he began to feel around to get a sense of how big the area they had to work with was, marking the safe spots with breadcrumb programs as he went.
It was enclosed with a short chest-high wall on both sides, and was roughly wide enough for them to walk single file. They could take cover behind the walls should they need to, but beyond that, they’d be pretty exposed if they were set upon now.
“Hoof on the trigger, Access.” Sheet Rock demanded. “The second you start to fall, disconnect.”
“I suppose I’m going ahead alone then?”
“Probably shouldn’t risk bunching up somewhere we can’t get past each other, we should keep our distance, just in case.”
Access started to retrace his steps, being sure to follow the trail he’d left.
The path was mostly straight, apart from some odd u-shaped corners and dead ends in places that didn’t seem to have any actual rhyme or reason for their existence.
Stranger still, it turned out the fog wasn’t just background decoration. It stretched as far as the eye could see both to the left, and to the right, but when Access looked back at Sheet Rock, he could see her clearly without obstruction.
The fog was clearly a mechanism to shroud something from view once it entered its area of effect, but only in one direction, in that you could see out, but not in. In theory, this meant the invisible path was by design, to disorientate and confuse attackers that didn’t know the right route through.
Access didn’t have to wait long until he found out what the fog was hiding when the ground vanished from underneath him, but he did not fall, instead he was frozen in place unable to move or talk, and even his deck refused to listen to his orders.
Pathetic.
There was something out there in the fog, watching him and Sheet Rock curiously.It “spoke” in a half-irritated, half-tired tone, like a mother speaks to a small child that had misbehaved.
Another pest from the outside, or perhaps a friend who disregarded the rules, let us see which you are.
Access couldn’t answer that, not for the lack of trying, but because he was physically unable to.
I do not recognize your signal, nor the signal of your partner, identify.
Finding himself able to speak, though still unable to move, Access answered.
“I forgot my ID chip.” he stammered. “Command asked me to connect from a hotel, I’m out of the city at the moment.”
The presence went silent for a moment, and Access got the sense that it was amused.
Yet another liar, like all the others that have tried and failed today. I will give you the chance to go peacefully, so long as you do not return.
Should you try again, I will not be as accommodating.
Before he could get another word out, his vision went black, forced out of the net by the presence.
As he came to, back in realspace, he could smell the distinctive stench of burnt silicon and felt something shaking him awake in a panic.
“Access, are you okay, what the hell happened?”
“Snowy?” he slurred. “What do you mean?”
The Synthetic pointed at the remains of his Cyberdeck.
“You were fine up until a few moments ago, when your Deck started smoking. I tried to trigger the forced disconnect as you instructed, which didn’t work, but thankfully you woke up about ten minutes later.”
“You didn’t think to disconnect the cable yourself?”
“I’m led to believe that would be a very bad idea.” Snowy pointed out. “I am unsure of the effect that would have on an organic nervous system as well, so I decided to err on the side of caution.”
“No, no, I don’t think it matters anyway.” Access slurred out, waving Snowy’s concerns off. “I got caught up in a trap, I couldn’t move, speak, couldn’t even order my Deck to trigger the disconnect on my end.”
“Same here.” Sheet Rock slurred from her chair. “Trapped, interrogated, then booted.”
“Snow, where are Scarlet and Bulwark right now?”
“They said they were going to try something else but-”
“Pull them out, now.” Accessed half-shouted. “There’s an AI protecting the border, it’s on high alert for intrusions and they’re only gonna get fried if they try.”
Snowy relented after he saw how serious Access was, and went to deliver the message.
“Did it interrogate you too?” Sheet Rock asked. “It was like I couldn’t breathe.”
“I’d hardly call that an interrogation. But since our Decks are trashed, I’ll assume it got its answers either way.” Access grunted. “Someone’s gonna pay for giving us faulty intel.”