Switching away from the message trail, I backed up, trying to I.D. the system that owned it, and then maybe a physical location.
“Oh. Hells. No….”
That came out a lot louder than I expected, and I looked around, before realizing I was in a cubicle. Good thing. Even so, I listened, relaxing only when I heard nothing from the resource centre outside. I was alone in here, but still…
I reached back and locked the cubicle door, thinking I should have done that before. I remembered Depredides—and the memory was like being shoved into a cold bath. Arach, Ghoul, Bendigo, and Blaedergil, aside, the company guarding Depredides security was one of the most effective—and vicious—I’d ever encountered, either before, or since.
I didn’t want to go up against them, again. Especially not with Mack and Tens out of commission, since that had been who’d gotten me out last time… them and Delight… and Pritchard… Oh, well hot-toasted crap on a stick! We might have a bigger problem than we’d thought—and I might just need to talk to Odyssey, because it might be a problem we shared.
I didn’t like it, but that was where the trail led. I was going to have to talk to Abby about this… but not before I’d done a bit more research. I pulled what I could from the legitimate web, and then sank beneath it, and into the chaotic world that was the intergalactic Dark Web.
Illegitimate servers, criminal minds, and the darkest of dark dealings were the order of the day, down here. Not that there was much ‘day’. I’d gotten an eyeful the last time I’d searched. This time, I got a whole lot more.
My stomach started a low-level churn, and my skin crawled. I scraped off trackers and tracers, cut viral hooks, and spun a half-dozen guard programs to walk with me through corridors of code that were looking for every advantage they could garner.
Whispers of the wolves, led me to somewhere with a lot more order. I passed unhindered, but every detail of my presence was noted and logged. I could see the programs pulling the information away from the shell I’d constructed, and wondered how long it would take them to break through.
Not long, as it turned out. The first attack came from the side, a virus that speared through the shell and hooked onto it, sending out tentacles that created a tracery of cracks through my disguise, and nothing I could do would patch it in time. I threw a second shield just before the first one burst around me, and hoped I’d been fast enough.
Not wanting to think about what would happen if I got hit a second time, or hit with something nastier, I ran—which, in computer terms means I began to pull out of the system. The orderly ambush site receded quickly enough, and I was about to surface in my implant, when it snapped back around me, sucking my mind right back to where I’d started.
Well, crap. That was a clever trick. I wondered how I was going to get out of it, and I was very glad the ship was isolated from the research centre, and that this terminal was isolated inside the research centre, itself. The Stars knew what sort of tracing program they’d put on me, and I sure as shit didn’t want the Shady’s location discovered by wolf forces.
Given I was just a little bit stuck, I decided it wouldn’t hurt to take a look around and see exactly who owned this section of the dark. Abby dropping in beside me was not something I’d thought I’d see in a million years.
“My, you’ve got yourself in a bit of a pickle, here, haven’t you?” she said, her net presence turning and using a spray can to paint a door on the wall beside us. “How about I take you home?”
Sounded good to me.
I looped my virtual arm through hers, as she reached for the handle.
“Is this how you met Tens?” I wondered as she opened the door and led me through.
Her arm tightened on mine, and she lifted me through darkness and out into the well-lit streets of the upper web.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” she asked, wiggling her eyebrows, and then she slapped me on the ass, and vanished. “Time you got back.”
I caught sight of two wolf constructs sliding up out of the pavement, and agreed. This time, it was easy to pull back to the terminal, unplug and shut down. With any luck, that, and the terminal’s Tens-created defenses would be enough to end the pursuit. That, and the fact I powered it down and unplugged it, so it was nothing more than a dead-weight of circuitry and disconnect.
How in all the worlds had Abby found me?
I checked my implant, and discovered she wasn’t in my head, that the buffer between the research centre and the rest of the ship still held. Well, that was interesting. She had, however, said I needed to get back, and that meant she’d had to come looking for me—and that meant she hadn’t sent anybody to fetch me… I wished I’d thought to bring my blaster with me, tried to work out where the nearest one was located.
It was a relief to discover I didn’t need it when I came out of the cubicle.
Abby had sent a crewman, but she hadn’t been able to get to me through the locked door of the cubicle. She must have gone back out of the research centre to talk to Abs, and then come back in to wait. She was standing opposite the cubicle door, in plain sight, talking to me before the door was fully open.
“Abby sent me,” she said, and I recognized one of the kitchen staffers I’d asked Abs to wake up. “She says you’re needed in the post-shift briefing.
The post-shift briefing?
I hadn’t thought I’d been gone that long.
“You’d be surprised,” Abby said, then added, “Good work, by the way.
