“Wait, Mom, wait! I don't understand!”
The bright light flashed again, followed by the sound of the whistling wind until, suddenly, it stopped.
***
Caiden gasped for air. His vision was blurry upon his abrupt awakening. His heart was beating out of his chest and beads of sweat trickled down his forehead.
“Shit, I must have fallen asleep.” Only ten minutes had passed. “It's that stupid vision again. Why is it always that vision? What does it mean?” Caiden mumbled to himself.
Mulling over this recurring dream, Caiden then took a deep breath and eventually put his NeuraVisor back on and logged back into CWR. He returned to the odd post he was studying prior to the interruption from Viana. He somehow managed to make sense of it and he ended up decoding it, unlocking a hidden link within the post. The link appeared untouched by anyone else. It was somewhat surprising, considering the sheer popularity of the post, that no one appeared able to solve it. He clicked on the new link and was presented with a strange riddle. This time it was written in plain text. Two of the same locked in a cage. Provided the luxuries of losses we’ve gained. Peering the windows, we solemnly weep, wishing our freedom would sooth us to sleep.
Befuddled at the bizarre nature of the post, Caiden looked it over one more time. He then posted a comment. This is simply a riddle of human captivity, imprisonment, or a lack of freedom. Nothing more nothing less. And whatever in captivity is one in the same or somehow similar to something else I guess. As soon as he posted his comment, he was sent a request for an audio chat. There was a red icon on the popup that indicated it was urgent.
“Hello? Hello?” The voice crackled through the transmission. There appeared to be a lot of interference on the connection. The voice became nearly unrecognizable, marred by static noise. “VseR, right? You’ve sol—the rid—”
“Hey, I think something’s wrong with your connection. Who is this?” Caiden asked.
“Please, help!” The voice crackled through and then suddenly cut out. The chat closed due to a poor connection.
It was a rather strange sequence of events. The odd, complex code, then the hidden riddle, and then the person tried to contact the man who cracked their mysterious post. He ran a search on the avatar, and it was a two-headed dragon. There was no indication of who it might be. Caidenwas able to discover the user’s Net Code address; Ab.43.ZZ. He was determined to get to the bottom of it when he received another encrypted message request on a private channel for an audio chat.
“Looks like a job request.” He peered at the username in question, “Username KingSleaze11, huh? Not so subtle, are they?”
The avatar of KingSleaze11 was the naked upper torso of a female with ample assets and a blank comic book conversation bubble for a head.
“Looks like we have another weird customer looking for business. Let’s see what they have to offer.” Caiden accepted the chat request, and a window with KingSleaze11’s avatar popped up with a volume icon in front of it, indicating that it was an audio chat only.
“Is this the heralded people’s champion and hacker extraordinaire, VseR?” the voice asked.
“Yeah, so they say,” Caiden replied.
“Great! The name’s Slavo.” Slavo’s voice reeked of arrogance and deceit. “I have a proposition that may be of interest to you should you choose to accept my offer.”
“Only if you’re willing to divulge the details,” Caiden asked.
“Let’s just say this is a request for redemption,” Slavo slyly replied.
“Okay, what do you want? You have sixty seconds,” Caiden shot back.
“Straight to the point; I like that! I am requesting that you hack into the Prime-1 Sovereign Bank’s security system. They have digital assets in upwards of seventy-five million Creds. We need someone to develop an undetectable evolutionary algorithm based virus that can quietly siphon the digital funds from Prime-1’s super server, and wire the funds directly to an offshore account of our choosing.” As Slavo was speaking he sent a holographic image of the bank account number and sort code he wanted the funds to be transferred to onto Caiden’s screen. The sort code indicated that the money was to go to a private Enzen Banking account.
“My team has been hard at work trying to develop their own virus, but none of their developments were strong enough. We had no choice but to turn to you,” Slavo explained.
“Ha! Hacking Prime-1 Bank Headquarters is digital suicide. They have one of the most sophisticated digital security systems ever heard of. Not even I would mess with them! Not to mention the only way to manipulate anything of theirs is to physically access one of their on-site terminals. A virus would only be good enough for a diversion, but it wouldn’t get you your money on its own. Sorry but I’ll have to decline. Too risky for me,” Caiden replied.
“Hmm, I’m sorry to hear that. But it’s interesting, you know. Considering that no ordinary person would have such intimate knowledge of their security systems without having attempted to at least test out how strong they were in the first place,” Slavo replied.
“What are you implying?” Caiden scoffed.
“You think this is a game? Hm? Did you really think with all your popularity on CWR that someone wouldn’t be profiling you? Did you really think you could cling to the illusion of your ‘anonymity’? Caiden Nyx?”
Caiden, shocked and taken aback, couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He was always thorough when covering his digital footprints. Panic set in.
“You’re probably wondering how I, of all people, know what I know about you Caiden. We’ve been planning this heist for quite some time. We have kept watch of the top five hackers on CWR. None of them came close to you and your abilities. But no matter what we did to get a hold of your file, we were always
