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kenpaisworkshop · 7 years

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Cyber-Sin: “Ruins”

Subject: @sinquest AU “Cyber-Sin”

Characters: Cyber!Ken’pai, Cyber!Armonia ( @tehcomicsans ), Cyber!Warlock ( @tomis-jb )

He was already in. It was almost too easy.

The monitor dimly lit his messy apartment, digitally-created shadows flickering on the far wall behind his chair. The rain had let up for a moment, but its moisture caused a thin mist over the streets below, illuminated by disparate sources of neon.

Ken'pai tilted his head at an angle from side-to-side, cracking his neck before rolling his shoulders as he settled in to his work. His Spex blinked in the upper-right corner of his vision, as he pressed a small button set into the black plate prosthetic over the top of his skull. A small microphone an speaker icon appeared.

“Did you get it?” A female voice rang in his ears.

“Yeah,” Ken answered, “looks like your source was right, ARM. I barely had to do anything to get past security. They really don’t have their shit together, huh?”

“Well, they’re a smaller company, but I’ve been hearing they’re planning something huge.”

A few holographic windows appeared, shedding a gentle cyan light on the lizard-man’s scales. “Well…sure, but what exactly could a wastewater treatment company like BIOSERV have up their sleeve? I thought their focus was on decontamination of pollutants.”

“That’s what we have to find out, Gray. I wouldn’t call for your help if I wasn’t concerned. Besides, BIOSERV handles at least 80% of the sewage treatment for the city, which means…”

“…That it could affect the water supply? I mean…it’s a stretch but I guess I understand. I’ll check it out and keep you posted.”

“Got it. Keep the channel open okay?”

“Got it ARM.”

A male voice called over the comm. “Hey Gray! If you get any trouble, abort immediately and we’ll try for a closer, more on-site connection, alright?”

“Hey Warlock. Yeah, I’ll be careful, but it really doesn’t seem like there’s too much security to worry about. Hell, if it’s this easy I’d say we don’t have anything to worry about.”

“Yeah, you’ll figure it out, just keep in touch. Talk it out if you want input.”

“Gotcha.”

Clawed fingers clacked against the keyboard as several windows popped up at once, showing several different PC setups around the BIOSERV offices. A smaller holographic window popped up in the corner, showing Ken’s system specs, including power usage, temperature, CPU and RAM usage, bandwidth allotment, and process numbers. He moved the window over to the lower left of the main screen and pressed the panel that said “diagnostic scan,” the same button slowly filling up with a percentage displayed below it.

[8% – SECURE]

He finally managed to find his way into the higher-up’s computer systems, opening up messages immediately and scanning the pinned messages for anything of note.

“…Nothing really going on,” he said aloud.

Many of them were more personal. Emails from loved ones asking when they’d be home for dinner, school referrals for their children, and the like. He decided against his better judgement to check the other, less-important messages just in case. This was perhaps the most boring part of the job, just reading the minutia of day-to-day office interactions of people he would most likely never, ever meet.

[19% – SECURE]

“Found one that might be interesting. Let’s see…”

He dragged the scroll bar to the center of the message to get a clear view.

[26% – SECURE]

“'Client has requested to postpone deployment of NEWAgent,’ that’s N, E,W, Agent, all one word. ‘Client wishes to have enough time to prepare machinery for upgrades that would be compatible with NEWAgent, as they have been met with setbacks.'”

“Okay,” ARM pondered, “I’m going to run a search for NEWAgent and BIOSERV, see what I can come up with…huh. That’s interesting.”

“What?”

“BIOSERV is working with Nanodyne on something. It was a small blurb in the news.”

“Nanodyne…where Magus works?” Tomis queried.

“Yeah. They wouldn’t be…using nanotech in the drinking water, would they?”

Ken shrugged, although neither of them could see it. “Well, they might use it to clean the water? Maybe they’re just using it because they found a way to make it work better than their normal biological agents?”

“Maybe, but…what about that NEWAgent and the 'client’s’ machinery? The need for compatibility would imply that there’s nanotech involved, since they’d have to match OS systems,” ARM reminded.

“Hmm…lemme root around a bit more.”

[35% – SECURE]

He dug deeper into the office system’s root files, pulling up a few diagnostics that he couldn’t exactly make sense of, but he guessed were for wastewater filtration and treatment, since they had obvious tells of water input and output vectors.

“Wait…Gray,” ARM said.

“Yeah?”

“BIOSERV…is primarily a wastewater treatment facility, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Wastewater treatment isn’t usually for drinking water and sewage, although they do a bit of that. A different company, contracted by the city handles the most of the sewage. Wastewater treatment is for water that wouldn’t be for drinking, like…irrigation, or…”

Ken tilted his head. “…or industrial use. The machines and their need for compatibility…”

“This is just a theory, but…what if they were about to put something in the water that would…not be compatible?”

“Then the factory would cease to function while the two different OS’s battle it out. It’d be a mess, probably take weeks, if not months to rectify. And even then…”

His eyes flashed open in realization.

“ARM…this is industrial sabotage!”

Something blinked. Ken didn’t notice.

[34% – SECURE]

“Gray, if you can, try to find out who that client is. Sabotage on this scale wouldn’t just take a company down, it could very well offset the economy if it’s serious enough. We need to know who stands to gain from this.”

“Got it.”

He closed a few of the extra windows hovering around the screen. They took a second to close down, but finally did. But he noticed.

“…ARM. I think I should pull out…but I’m gonna look a bit more.”

“You’re sure?”

“…Just a hunch.”

He ran a cross-search of the word “client” in the system’s messaging protocols, also pulling up phone records and voicemail transcriptions. His system began to lurch a little from the strain.

[34% – SECURE]

He blinked. He noticed something odd in how long it was taking to open each individual file. Each was just a few milliseconds longer than the last, but for someone like Ken, it was an eternity.

Something was wrong.

“ARM. I’m getting out now. I think I’ve been zapped.”

“What?! How?!”

“I dunno, but…”

He pressed his process kill-switch, ending each and every window all at once. He glanced down at the lower-left window that showed his diagnostic scan.

[34% – SECURE]

It was frozen.

No…something was changing. The power output was rising beyond his system’s usual usage, far beyond anything that should be possible. The CPU temperature was beginning to climb.

“ARM! Disconnect from my system right now!”

“I already did. Gray! What’s going on?!”

“Kill the comm chatter! I’ve been–”

“Gray!” Tomis shouted, “Gray! Stay there! I’m on my way!”

“Warlock! Kill your comm! If you don’t, you mi–”

Static hissed in his ear as he pulled the Spex off his face, forcing them to disconnect. He frantically dug into his computer’s root, before noticing a small icon that had been created on his desktop.

A text file.

The filename was “NAUGHTY NAUGHTY”.

Somebody was definitely in here. He opened the text file. There was only one sentence.

“Got you in 30 seconds.”

Even a basic hacker knew what that meant. A trace program was underway, and once it was completed, SecuWatch would be battering down his apartment door.

Ken began a head count of the seconds as he took action. His CPU’s temperature climbed into the triple digits, as the power supply in his computer began to crackle and whine. Ken had no other choice but to grab the large plugs in the wall. Once he did, a massive spark of electricity arced between him and the computer itself.

He howled in pain as he kept pulling, despite being electrocuted. The implant in his right arm was dampening the intensity of the shock, but it still ran down his leg to ground itself into the floor. Finally digging deep, he managed to unplug his system completely, the shock finally subsiding as he collapsed on the ground.

Electricity cracked and popped in a loud, violent flash before everything fell dark and silent. The surge had managed to knock out the power for his entire apartment, only illuminated by the neon signs outside. A small, flickering light from his computer’s hardware told him that his opponent had won, and the damage had already been dealt, as the sound of flames crackled and smoke began to waft out.

He crawled over to the kitchen and grabbed the fire extinguisher, crawling back toward his system and spraying the powdery substance all over, knowing just how much more damage he was doing to his system.

He was essentially committing digital suicide.

When it was all said and done, he angrily threw the extinguisher as hard as he could, hearing it bounce off of the kitchen counter and clamoring to the floor.

And then…he just sat there.

He didn’t know just how much time had passed. He sat in the gloom of his powerless apartment for what felt like days, even though it had more than likely been about an hour. Everything he’d worked so hard for was gone. His system was a wreck. His mind filled with hatred and a terrible desire to end BIOSERV with a terrible passion.

A buzzing sound flared up for a moment, telling Ken that his apartment’s power had been restored. Whatever happened must’ve been enough to blow out the transformer. Funny, he thought, I thought I got into this to help people, and here I managed to blow out the power for the whole building. Maybe even the block. What’s the point?

He didn’t even bother to turn the lights back on. He just sat there, facing the window and looking at the streets below. Everybody down there had a purpose. Everybody was a cog in some great machine, and he thought that by defying that, he’d had a higher function in the world.

And now here he was, alone in the dark.

Some purpose.

His Spex, now laying on the floor, blinked open, the cyan lenses becoming the only remaining light in his apartment. It was a text message from Tomis.

“Knock Knock.”

Ken snapped the Spex back onto the bridge of his nose, still not moving from his position. He sent the cursor to his apartment security controls and unlocked the door.

“It’s open!” he called.

A human stepped into the apartment. He had short, dark hair that swept off to one side, accompanied by a thin mustache. His attire was pretty standard, Black slacks and shoes, a dark shirt underneath a rather form-fitting leather jacket.

He saw the lizard-man seated on the floor and clicked the apartment lights on, then took stock of the damage.

“Oh…Ken…”

Tomis walked over to the computer station and picked up some of the powder, rubbing it between his fingers and identifying it immediately. The fire extinguisher laying on the kitchen floor only served to solidify what he already knew.

“…What happened?”

Ken growled. “I was fucking careless is what happened! Of course the security was too fucking lax, it was a goddamn trap! They knew that somebody would be investigating this, and if I didn’t know any better, I’d say one of Mona’s sources set us up.”

“Alright, alright, calm down, Scales,” Tomis comforted, placing a hand on Ken’s shoulder before sitting down next to him. “We’re gonna figure out who did this, and we’re going to make them pay.”

“Yeah we fucking are. We’re going to make them fucking suffer for this.”

Tomis had never seen Ken so riled up before. “Hold on, okay, first off, you’ve gotta relax. You’re not going to accomplish anything if you run off half-cocked. We have to be careful and thorough. We can hit these guys, but we have to know what we’re up against. The more we know, the harder we can hit 'em.”

“…you’re right,” Ken sighed.

“Now c'mon. We can pick up the pieces later, let’s get something to eat, take your mind off things for a bit.”

“I…”

“…My treat?”

Ken'pai huffed. “I’m…not hungry.”

“Ken, if you don’t come with me, right now, I’ll choke you out and carry you.”

The lizard-man knew that the human was more than capable enough of following through on that threat. He gave a nod. “Alright, just…”

“Just what?”

“I just…want to sit here…for a moment.”

“Okay.”

Tomis shifted into a more comfortable seating position, wrapping his arm around Ken'pai’s back. The reptile leaned his head over, resting it on the human’s shoulder.

“It’s bullshit,” Ken said.

“Yeah. Total bullshit,” Tomis agreed, squeezing a bit tighter as the two sat in the ruins of Ken’s life.

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Author’s note: I had this story in my head for a month, but when @tomis-jb had his computer problems, I thought it was a bit too…coincidental and shelved the idea for later.

#Short Form #Series #CyberSin #Sinquest #Cyberpunk #Cyber!Ken'pai #Cyber!Tomis #Cyber!Armonia #re-upload #building to something #Got a third one in the works #starting to reorganize my work #starting small #going to try to do a little each day #and keep to a theme probably #queued post #My Work #Writing

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