Chapter 215

“So you’re basically exploring a haunted house?” I sent a very flat look over at Malcolm who from the smirk he was sending me knew that wasn’t what I had said at all.

“It’s an old server.”

“So like an old house, abandoned and alone.”

“Full of old data.”

“Good stuff hidden in the attic.” He added and I felt my eye twitching.

“And full of Daemons to protect it.”

“Ghosts there to kill trespassers.”

“I’ll kill you.”

“You love me.” He offered instead and the elevator opened to the netrunning cave.

I, being the bigger and better person, ignored him, and didn’t punch him in the arm. The fact he was carrying the food had nothing to do with it, but I did notice that when he put the food down he pointedly moved out of my reach.

Smart boy.

“Alright, let me set up. You need anything?” I asked him, as I wandered over to my netrunning chair.

“Nope. All good.” He said, tapping on the bags of food.

“Preem. It might take me a while to get going, so feel free to relax.” I told him as I went through some checks. The chair coolant was a little low, I’d likely need to update it soon, but it was still good. Everything was set. I leaned back, hooked myself up and closed my eyes.

Then opened them in a new room. I walked over to the nice couches and flopped in, which didn’t really feel like anything since I was now in the net.

First thing first? I needed to finish leveling up. I was going to pump some numbers up, but I remembered previous issues.

Glancing at my current netrunner stats it really proved the issue.

Intelligence 14 (14) Due to Cyberization, Maximum value has increased by 4.

-Breach Protocol 12

-Quick Hacks 9

-Programming 13

Other than Programming everything was way too low! As much as my fingers itched to put a point into Quick Hacks, I skipped it, and instead put a point into Breach Protocol.

I shivered as I suddenly had experience in skimming data centers. Cutting back traces while digging through data, and moving through server architecture.

Sorting the feeling I processed it and only when I was feeling like it had all settled did I pull up my system and drop another.

As I knew getting too many skill upgrades close together was a bit intense. The second data drop gave me even more on moving through the net, the sense that what we saw wasn’t the truth, and if you looked at it in different ways, you could move and slip through things as if they were simply suggestions.

There was knowledge touching on something big I felt, but it wasn’t quite complete. Not ready.

I started looking, just without my eyes, noticing how… Fragile this lobby room was. The walls, despite looking like warm woods, and stone, were… Fragile. Cardboard with pictures on them. There was no durability. I could break them down even without my admin access.

A server was a series of data points but… The connections between them were only natural suggestions. It wasn’t like data on a hard drive was stored in rooms to access only through a door. No, it was all data, and the access was usually the knowledge on how the computer could process the data listed, where to find those numbers to represent-

I shook off my thoughts and stood up. Internalize the information and move on.

Pulling up the old data that Vortex had given me, I found the IP for the server she’d told me about and I slipped out of my lobby and into the net. Then instantly into a leap across the city along the web lines taking me far out of the normal connection points. If I had to position this from reality…

Not out of the city, but deeper than normal, like it was buried under ground as the new net was built upon the old.

I checked the details she’d given me, and looked down, huh. That wasn’t actually a sewer along the street, but an old door that now only showed a sliver of what it had once been, a data access point.

I squatted down and sent in a Ping, watching my data stream through without too much disruption. I can see why Vortex might not have wanted to check this place out for long before leaving. A squeezed data point like this would make latency increase inside…

Unless you fixed it. Hmm. I looked over the connection. Technically it was being overlaid with a more modern data net, which is what the street I was standing on represented.

Technically it was a programming issue, rather than hardware, or else this connection wouldn’t even exist.

Could I reroute the data stream to give better access? Yes. Could I do it without pissing off whoever owned this data stream?

Hmm… Maybe. As long as the adjustment was short term, and I kept it from causing too many ripples. A data choke point would be noticed pretty quickly.

I looked around, confirmed no one was around so to speak, and dived into the data.

Slow and steady, I hacked in. The router that controlled this data area was accessed as quietly as I could, then with just a little work, I made a single adjustment on the router’s workload.

The net around me shifted, the small door that led to this server was now bare, a set of ancient steps leading down into it, as the street had seemed to split open.

There was no hesitation as I entered, time wasn’t on my side. I didn’t need to rush, but the longer I waited the higher chance someone would fix what I had just done and cut me off while in a dangerous server.

I slipped through the door and instantly stilled.

This server was old. The architecture didn’t… I looked around, but even that caused some visual issues. The server was… Flat? Like a 3d person looked at 2d. That’s what the sense it gave me was.

*Whoa what is that?* Malcolm asked in my ear and I shook my head.

“Some sort of weird server architecture…” I explained as I looked around. I was in a lobby structure, but it wasn’t anything like the servers I’d been in before. I remembered the white empty room that the idiots that had tried to kill Malcolm had used for their car dealership website.

I remembered the fractured distorted realm of the broken server Yoko had showed me.

This wasn’t like either of them. A distorted low res area, that my display was struggling to properly convey.

Almost instinctively, I pulled open my Cyber Decks systems, and clocked back some settings, and suddenly the area reshaped itself correctly.

Comparing it to 2d had been correct.

I realized what I was seeing, this was an old school server. Back before netrunning had gotten as advanced, this server didn’t have the architecture for the sort of interactivity I was used to, so everything showed up as data lines, and untextured shapes.

*Jeez, this is crazy, I feel like it’s giving me a headache.* Malcolm added, and I nodded but remembered he couldn’t see that.

“Yeah, old server, see that? That’s the data line to the server data.” I pointed out a sort of hallway made out of glowing lights. But… “Fortunately this server is so old a lot of the security won’t even work on modern netrunners.”

Instead of heading down the hallway, I simply walked over and walked up the wall as if it was the ground, and then ‘out’ of the room that was meant to keep runners inside.

Standing on top of the hallway I simply walked over it, bypassing the access and security restrictions, by jumping over the data node.

Digital architecture had changed drastically with the advent of netrunners. Just putting a password on a file wasn’t going to stop a netrunner. You needed to build server fortifications, and defenses from entities that were partially digital.

It was funny, but the same advancements meant to stop Netrunners were how AI could be stopped as well. Even if Netrunners were nothing compared to a proper AI.

I had a thought that maybe it had been the AI that had pushed the advent of these defenses instead of netrunners, and it was the netrunners that came after that had run into AI defenses.

Stolen story; please report.

Either way it didn’t matter. I walked over the hall, and the next ‘room’ although really it was more like a mess of data points was supposed to be some sort of hub page. Unfortunately it wasn’t unprotected.

I could see four IMP Daemons wandering around. The Daemons were old, slow and stuttering along pre planned paths, not the sort of thing that would be a danger to a modern netrunner… Well, only if they knew how to move out of the architecture.

I poked my hand into the room, the security of this room already bypassed meant it was less a solid wall, and more just a data processing node.

Then I started uploading and after everything was ready I sent off my [HEAT Bullet Mk.1] the attack was registered by the server and the entire glowing lights shifted to a darker red. Huh an early alert system for the Daemons inside the server.

Neat.

But it was too late, the attack was too strong for old Daemons.

*250 XP Gained.*

They burst into sparkles of broken data and that was enough for me.

I started hacking now that I was past the security and the Daemons were gone. Sending in a Ping to the data node, and watching as the my own light, a purple hue burst out and started pinging through the server. Lines of purple light shifting and spiraling all over as I stood up and just watched as the lights showed me an outline of the entire server…

Hmm. Okay over there was data storage. But I narrowed my eyes… I pinged again as the light faded after a while and watched again.

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