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Cool Darkness: Chapter 5
Cool Darkness
by Matthew Carpenter
Chapter 5 : A Thorn in Paradise
"So what the hell happened in there?" questioned Nemesis
looking towards the front of the van in Nebulus' direction.
"I was watching you more than I was watching myself" told a
disgusted Nebulus, completely shamed by his performance or lack there
of.
"At least you know a sign when you see one. What happened to
Jack?"
"What do you mean, what happened to Jack" rudely snapped
Nebulus who turned around to give Nemesis the evil eye.
"We lost him before we got to the strike zone. Where'd he go? I
thought he was supposed to follow us all the way out."
"I don't know. Maybe he bumped into ICE or something. Why
don't we get back there quickly and find out" Nebulus pointed out to
Donna who pushed her foot into the floor, accelerating the van as she
drove on into the city.
Not soon enough for Nebulus' liking, the van pulled in front of
the garage door of the warehouse. Nemesis calmly hopped out of the
back door of the van and proceeded to open the door. The van came to a
quiet stop with the garage door crashing down behind it. The lights
were still on; the office door to the underground comps was still shut.
"Jack! Hey Jack! Where the hell are you shit-head!?" yelled
Nemesis, feeling a little funny about the whole situation. Walking to the
back of the van, he picked up his rifle and proceeded to walk towards the
office door. He was followed by Nebulus and eventually Slash, who had
had enough of Jack's clowning around. Screwing around on the nets is
one thing, but leaving a team in the thick of a job is another.
They approached the office door and found it still locked from the
inside. Nebulus walked over to a nearby desk, reached into the top
drawer and picked up a magnetic key. He returned to the door and
inserted the flat key into the slot just under the door handle which
produced a soft pop as the lock disengaged. Nebulus opened the door and
the group peered in. The office was still the same : a few file cabinets, a
metal desk with a wooden, rocking office chair, a single light at the desk
with another one in the ceiling, and a small hand comp sitting at the
right of the desk.
'Nothing is missing. Everything is cool...except' thought Nebulus.
"Jack's gone."
"What!?" wined Nemesis in disbelief of wherever Nebulus had
derived this idea.
"The chair's here. He should be sitting in it down in the room"
stated Nebulus loosing his cool.
"Bullshit. He and I changed that last week 'cause he wanted a
padded chair so his butt wouldn't hurt so much" slapped Nemesis.
"Huh!?!?"
"Come on" said Nemesis entering the room and pressing the
correct sequence of keys on the hand comp to enable the elevator to the
comp room. Slash moved the chair out of the way as the plate under the
leg area of the desk slowly began its decent into the comp room. Within
10 seconds it had hit bottom, about 12 feet below in the concrete dungeon
where Jack roamed.
"Jack. Hey, Jack..you down there!?" yelled Slash. No answer.
"He's probably still in the nets. He'll never respond like that"
spoke Nebulus.
"Well there's only one way to find out" said Nemesis as he hang
dropped from the desk edge into the dark pit.
"Don...hunnn....you moron" Slash sighed under her breath. 'He
never thinks about traps.' "Watch out for traps." Nemesis never heard
her voice; his concentration on where he was and not what people were
doing topside. He pivoted left in the direction of the comp room. The
corridor to the room was normal sized with a low ceiling. The walls were
made of cold concrete that still flaked grit when rubbed against. It was
dark with a few streaks of light coming from the room, barely lighting
enough for someone to see. Nemesis changed his eyes to night vision to
see that was up with Jack.
'All right Jack, where the hell are you man.' He peered into the
comp room. The two main comps on the far wall were humming as usual,
the short ceiling making them look larger than normal. He walked
further into the room. The four workstations were still running with
their monitors running lines of info across them constantly. 'Jack.
Where the hell are you.' He lowered his rifle. In fact he lowered it until
the barrel almost scraped the ground. He stood completely erect and
walked over to the wall where the control panel was. A single touch and
a second panel came up. He closed his eyes as he turned the ceiling light
on. His eyes were switched back to normal vision and he opened his
eyelids.
"Come on down, guys!" yelled Nemesis as he looked over at Jack
who was still slouched in his padded chair, still jacked into the nets.
"What's the deal!?" yelled back Slash.
"He's here. Still in the net." The elevator platform began to move
back up and in no time the rest of the team minus Donna was in the comp
room. "I guess he's still in the net."
"What the hell's he still doin' in there?" replied Slash quite
disgusted at Jack now that he was still here and had left them in Cryon.
"He must've run into something." sighed Nebulus looking at his
foot as it tapped lightly on the concrete floor. 'What could he have run
into? ICE? Naw, couldn't be. He's too good for that. Then again... Naw,
he must be screwin' around or somethin'. But why would he leave us in
Cryon to go screw around somewhere? I wonder if they got this thing up
and running before we got there. Or what if they had another site, or if
we attacked the wrong site! Couldn't be. We planned this thing to
perfectly to hit the wrong site. Yeah, sure.' he thought to himself,
especially after how badly they fucked the whole deal up. 'Well, there's
only one way to find out.' Looking up he said "I'm goin' in" and started to
walk towards the workstation next to Jack's.
"What! You can't be serious. Let's just pull the plug and get him
back" screeched Slash.
"Yeah, right. And possibly loose him forever. He might be into
something serious, and there's only one way to find out." replied
Nebulus, putting a wireless jack next to his ports.
"I thought you could track someone like that for cryin' out loud!"
"We'll see about that." With that he sat in the chair and jacked in,
wireless of course.
"Well, let's get them prepared for a long trip. I can't see them
coming back any time soon" softly spoke Slash. She and Nemesis turned
to the one cabinet that had little components and things in it. The door
was opened and two IV's were taken out by Slash. She walked over to the
two and began to get Jack ready for insertion. Nemesis in the mean time
began preparing the two nutrient bags. In no time, both Jack and
Nebulus were outfitted with medical nutrient bags that fed into their
system. That way they at least wouldn't dehydrate.
Nebulus stood up from a kneeling position on the
asphalt street of an unknown city. It was dark, actually
gray in color and the clouds in the sky were moving very
fast. The surrounding buildings stood like monuments
compared to Nebulus' small body. A little piece of
newspaper skipped by along the ground behind his feet.
The long street he was looking down seemed to go on
forever. The city was completely deserted.
"Strange" he told himself outloud. "Oh, well, let's
get going." He began walking in the direction of the first
gate to get into mainstream cyberspace. A few steps and
he leaned forward to the ground and shape changed into a
sleek black sports car, one of the new European cars that
can top 300 mph. Fat tires, no rear view mirrors; kinda
like an old Countach he thought to himself as he squealed
his tires and flew down the streets.
"Great. Traffic jam already." In the near distance
he could see lots of people trying to get into the gateway.
"Always a bunch of jerks who don't know there way
around the block yet." With a glance skyward, he pulled
off the ground and moved a story or two above the rest of
the traffic. Flying over the crown was fun. The first
gateway was breached easily and he soon got back onto
the road and cruised into the highways, the internet
highways that connected to everywhere in the world, and
then some.
After only a little time, his speed began to slow.
Actually he began to slow immensely, eventually coming
to a complete stop. 'What the hell is going on?' he thought
to himself, checking all of his systems. Then he began to
shape change back into a person, except he hadn't chosen
to do so. 'Somebody's taking control of my environment.'
Then he began to fly backwards, completely out of
control. He fought to stabilize and he tried to stop, but
eventually was thrown back into the crowd of people
waiting at the gateway entrance. With an additional
thrust, he was tossed into the crowd, landing on the hard
asphalt just like everyone else had.
"What the hell is going on!" he yelled at the top of
his lungs as he stood up, wiping himself off. The area
around he began to change and soon he was standing on a
computer generated grid. No streets. No buildings. Just
grids. He continued to look around, finally running his
identifier program. In a few seconds an arrow appeared
pointing in the direction off to his right, toward the
gateway. He started to push his way in that direction,
searching for Jack. The gateway soon became clearer to
him as it was a large billboard sign which read :
The Cyberspace Mob now rules the nets
Pay to Enter. Pay at your OWN Risk
"What the hell is going on, here!" he yelled.
"Oh shut up up there you asshole!" came from
someone behind him. He turned around to see who the
hell was yelling at him in a crisis like this.
"Fuck you buddy!" he yelled back, not knowing
who had yelled at him. He continued to push his way
towards the front. Eventually he got within a few
hundred feet of the gateway and recognized Jack only a
few steps in front of him.
"Jack, what the hell is going on here man!?" asked
Nebulus as he reached his companion.
"What the hell are you doing here? I thought you
were still in Cryon."
"I was. We got back already. What the hell
happened to you?"
'Take a look. One second I was in, the next I was
pulled out by these guys. Do you believe this shit. They've
taken over all the surrounding gateways and there's no
way in or out to another gateway."
"What do you mean. You can't even break it?"
"No one can" explained Jack in a sorrowful tone of
voice. "I've found a few friends here and they can't break
it. Whoever made this isn't working for the government,
military or a company. This is straight from the
underground. All I can figure is that it's written in a new
AI language that actually learns who you are and how to
keep you from getting into the gateway if you haven't
paid."
"You mean to tell me that someone is holding the
gateway hostage?"
"Yep. The funny part is that no one has any idea
who could've pulled a stunt like this off. This is beyond
professional. I can't even tell where it's coming from."
The two stood around almost as lost as everyone else. It
was getting more crowded as time went on and eventually,
Nebulus had had enough.
"Get a site set up so we can start attacking this
thing from the inside out."
"Yeah right" replied Jack completely disgusted
now. "Don't you think I've tried it already in about a
thousand configurations, only to get tossed back without
getting any further into the system. I told you once you
moron, the more you do the more it understands about
you, which means that it can stop you easier every time
you try something new."
"So how do we get the fuck through" blazed a
beyond frustrated Nebulus.
"So what should we do now?" asked Nemesis, peering towards the
elevator. After standing there for ten minutes, his patience had run out
and a bar run was the first thing that ran into his head. "I know. How
about some Black Oil?"
"That dump. Naw, I'm not in the mood" casually replied Slash.
"How about Hot Kicks" she said with a sly grin growing on her face as
she looked into Nemesis' eyes.
"You gotta be kiddin' me. We don't fit into a place like that."
"That doesn't keep you from screwin' every chic with big tits,
long legs, and stockings pulled up to her crotch that works there now
does it?" she kidded pulling him towards the elevator.
"Jealous?" he asked with a smirk.
"I'm coming in my pants just thinking about you" she joked as
they stood on the elevator platform. She pressed her hand against the
wall where a hidden panel was and the platform began to rise.
Topside, they walked out of the office to find Donna sitting in one
of the office chairs in front of a desk off to the side of the warehouse.
"Everything OK with Jack?"
"Who knows. Nebulus went into the matrix to fetch him" replied
Slash. "Hey. We're gonna go to a bar. Wanna come?"
"Sure. But first, where's my money?" she said getting back down
to business.
"Nebulus handles that and he is preoccupied right now." Donna
wasn't too pleased about this. In fact she was getting quite pissed off as
she stood up to face Slash. "Chill woman. It's not like we're gonna forget
you. Jeez."
"Hey. A job is a job. Now it's done and I want my money!"
"Look honey, you ain't gonna get paid until he gets out of the nets
so why don't you just pack that bitchy attitude of yours away and chill
out until he is free. This job ain't done until we're all back and we got
two in the nets!" snarled Slash, frowning her brow.
Nemesis looked on at the 'cat fight' as he called it between the
two. 'Wait a minute.' He looked at Donna's forehead. 'Zoom in. More.
There. Now look at that. Sweat. And it's not even hot here, either.' He
moved his gaze down to her hands. 'Same thing, and even a little
twitchy.' He panned back up to her chest which was expanding and
contracting a little faster and larger than he would've expected. He
switched his eyes to IR, trying to get a thermal scan of her body. To no
avail, the combat suit that she still wore blocked most of the signals
coming from her body and canceled his experiment.
"All right. Chill out. Why don't you take a shower and get
changed and I will pull Nebulus out in time for him to pay you. Then we
can go to the bars. OK?" stated Nemesis.
"Where the hell am I gonna..."
"There's a shower in the bathroom over there" he said pointing to
a door along the office wall, "and your extra clothes that you brought are
still in the van, right?"
"Don't EVEN think about pullin' somethin' stupid, Nemesis" she
warned with a glare. Nemesis didn't move and didn't loose eye contact
until she turned around to get her stuff out of the van. Slash took his
arm and turned him to fact her.
"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" she scowled in a low
voice.
"Trust me."
By now, Jack and Nebulus had jumped in and out of
cyberspace at least a dozen times, trying to trick the
gateway or get past it somehow. Each time they would
bring in different attack programs and loose them just as
quickly as the 'Cyberspace Mob' would find them and
erase them, or make them unusable. There were now
about five people in a group around Jack and Nemesis; all
of whom knew each other through one facet or another.
"So where do we go from here?" sighed one of the
guys.
"We have to find another way around it.
Everything we've tried has failed. Period. And I can't see
any way around it" said Jack.
"So the cybermaster Jack has finally met his
match. How interesting" stated Nebulus, getting more
excited at the prospect of what seemed like the ultimate
challenge.
"I wouldn't say that so soon. It's just going to take
some time to figure out how to get around it" replied Jack,
letting the comment fly over his head.
"So where are we?" asked one of Jack's friends.
"Simple. We can't get past without paying, which
is completely absurd. We know it's not being done by the
government, military, a company, Mogul, Nestroth and a
few other groups. But that leaves a lot of names that,
although I can't figure who could've masterminded this,
could be responsible for it" stated Jack.
Someone else spoke up. "Well, attack and defense
programs don't work. It can tell who we are and seems to
know our strengths and weaknesses. Camouflaging
doesn't help since it kills that first. I don't think if we
sent ICE against it it would even work."
"What! Are you nuts. How the hell would you SEND
ICE after it. There's nowhere to keep it connected to to
run it" heckled another.
"Yes there is and that's exactly what we're gonna
do" spoke Jack, standing up and pacing around in a very
small circle. "We can attach it to the gateway itself. It's
identifier must still exist or we couldn't have gotten here."
"Yeah, but it'll already know how to kill ICE."
"Yeah, but I know a way to make it so they can't
track it or disarm it" ecstatically spoke Jack. "Everyone
jump out and meet me at my comp room in 1 hour."
Donna came out of the bathroom wearing a short mini with tights
underneath it, highlighting her legs with black spandex. Her wet hair
left trickles of water on her leather short jacket that covered a tank top.
'Switch to IR. Focus and zoom on chest area. Just as I thought.'
"You definitely look sexy tonight, woman" yelled Nemesis from across
the warehouse. He hopped off the desk he was sitting on and approached
her.
"So where's Nebulus with my money, macho man?" she said with
a smirk in her smile.
"This way, my lady" he said, raising his left hand, palm up, to take
hers as a rightful gentleman should. She placed her right hand in his
with a flirtatious smile. He slowly started to turn around and Donna
began to take a step forward to accompany him.
Quickly, Nemesis spun back in her direction, landing a bone-
breaking fist in her stomach. Instantaneously, she fell to the ground as
if life had been sucked out of her. She laid on the ground in a fetal
position, holding her stomach, completely unable to breath from the
attack. Nemesis looking over to Slash who was sitting at a desk, giving
her the signal. She rose from her chair carrying a needle. Nemesis
reached down and gripped Donna's jacket firmly by the shoulders and
ripped it down her arms so that they were bare from her shoulder to her
elbow. She winced in pain, still unable to breath. Nemesis reached his
hand up and received the needle from Slash.
"Nighty night, my little spy" cooed Nemesis with a devil's grin, as
he injected her with the tranquilizer.
"Nighty night, bitch" spit Slash.
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