The gaming industry has become more popular than ever, with people trying to find ways to escape the real-world grind, and this means that there has also been an increase in companies trying to take advantage of players through predatory monetisation schemes.

But dealing with them is not the worst. The fake software promising you free in-game currencies, if you have them installed, simultaneously stealing your data, is arguably more malicious.

— how even your hobbies are in danger, article by the Purple Truth.

“What do you mean, want to cheat this test? I am pretty sure that was kind of the point, right?” Yui says, a confused look on her face.

“I guess that means you are in.” I say, while loading some coordinates into the fancy VPN program I am… let’s say, borrowing.

Then I grab onto Yui's shoulder. “You ready?”

Yui nods, and I activate the program. This time, instead of landing in a spherical room with turrets, we find ourselves in what I would describe as a gamer room, with several posters of games on the wall and a strewn-about mess of different types of figurines. There are some large screens on the far wall as well. This room would probably not smell great. Luckily, this is the mesh, so instead of sweaty socks, it smells like a lemon field. Inside, there is a bronze trashcan-looking robot with several balls attached to its sides that turns around and points its… plunger at us. The fuck?

“Identify yourself!” the robot tells us in a high-pitched metallic tone.

“Hey, I am Sofia. This is my girlfriend, Yui. We are kind of lost. Could you point us to the toilets or give us a map? That would be rather helpful.” I say to the thing with a bright smile.

“We are in the mesh there are no toilets here.” I can hear the confusion in its monotone voice

“Sorry, my mistake. We will leave and get out of your hair. I mean bronze scalp then,” I say as I grab Yui’s arm and start heading out.

“Wait,” the machine says, “I know virtually everyone in the cube, but you two don’t look familiar at all.”

“We are new here. Sorry for the late introduction. Someone asked our help at, you know, the introduction game’s admin station. Could you point the way?” I ask, doing my best to act innocently.

“You go to the left here, and then it is the 4th door on the left.” the machine says.

I thank the bot, and we head out, going to the stylised corridors that make it look like we are on some kind of spaceship.

“Okay, you have to tell me how the fuck you got us in here.” Yui says when we are out of earshot.

“Simple, I remembered the most important thing about hacking. The greatest vulnerability in any system will always be the human element.”

“Okay, and how did we get in the British bargain bins room.”

“Ah, that is simple. I sold something to him. More accurately, I sold him the blueprint to a piece of samurai tech. Then, I simply put a piece of code hidden within the image. That code would send me a location ping so that I could teleport us there.”

“Okay, but how could you have been sure he would have run the code?”

“Simple, most of the cube runs on protected code. At this point, I am pretty sure that one, if not more, samurai were part of the construction. The problem with the protector code, and why it is hard to emulate and decipher, is that it is also structure-based. So where a piece of code is is also important, making most of the protector code look like abstract images. So, by hiding the set code in an actual image, so long as he opened it in the cube, the system would instantly recognise and run the code.”

“You have to teach me how to code like that.” Yui says to me with big eyes.

“Sure, I think I still have all my notes on it. I can send you a copy when I go and collect them. Be warned, it took me up to a year to be decent with it.” I say.

“Thank you so much. By the way, what are we going to do once we go inside there?” Yui asks while pointing at one of the big metal doors.

“Act natural and see how long it takes for someone to notice us.” I say with a grin on my face.

Yui is mirroring my grin. “Ooh, that sounds fun indeed!”

We open the door to some kind of NASA-looking control room, about seven people milling about, frantically scanning the different monitors. Yui and I slowly walk in and sit down on a couple of the higher chairs overlooking the spectacle, close behind, what I assume, is the leader of this operation.

“I can’t find them in the honeypot glades.” One of the avatars, formed like nothing more than a burning flame, says.

“They're also not in the malware mountain.” Another person says.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

“Where have they gone?” a man in the middle says. He is wearing a bulky suit of blue power armour. “Has anyone checked the feed? Maybe they're just sending fake footage to hide?”

One of the players, a lizard of some kind, looks back, spotting us sitting behind the marine, and flicks its gaze between us. I decided just to give them a small smile. They smile back, showing way more teeth than I am comfortable with before turning back.

While they continued their frantic search, I sent the second copy of myself to my private mesh room and put it to sleep. Having two bodies active at once is a lot harder to control than I thought. After that is finished, I start a whispered discussion with Yui about the different systems and subsystems that they are using. Suddenly, the main guy turns around and spots us.

He looks at us with shock. “How did you two get in here?”

I point back behind me. “We came in through the door.”

“But how?” he says, looking confused.

“Well, we turned the wheel in the middle to unlock the door, and then we just walked inside.” I continue my explanation.

“I get that, but how do you get inside of here and outside of the proving ground?”

“Proving ground, that is what you call it? Whatever, does not matter. In the same way we got in, we told the mesh space that we were here, and it accepted it. That is rather clever. Do you mind if I keep the program and work on it some more?”

The man looks a bit dumbfounded. “Welcome aboard, I guess.” he says, in an unsure tone. “Let me show you guys around first, then we can have a discussion about security.”

The guy shows us a bunch of sights, which are mostly collections of hangout spots where people play tabletop and wargames, relaxation spots, and even a job board. He explained to us how we can manipulate the physics here and the automated droid.

He explicitly tells us to use the set method because the last time people used their own code to do that, they created a small war inside the building. Which, personally, I think sounds awesome. Lastly, he shows us to our room, an empty space we can fill with whatever we want. Basically, allowing us to create a small hacking office. There is a bunch of anti-tracking and spy software in the cube, so accessing any web pages in the cube will prevent anything bad from happening.

After all that, we sat down in Yui’s room, which was actively decorated with finds and ruined tech, making it look like a lost jungle base. The marine, whose name is Blue Striker… okay, not their real name, but their hacker name is Blue Striker. Anyway, we are sipping some kind of sugary drink.

“So how did you do it?” Blue Striker says after a while.

I look at him, a bit confused. “How did I do what?”

“Get in. I know you got in, and that makes you members fair and square, but I would still like to know in case we have a massive security breach.” He explains.

“I got in the same way as how I entered the cube in the first place; I just changed the coordinates. Also, using a four-coordinate system for the inner part of the cube is really smart. I did not think of that.”

“Yeah, but how did you find out those coordinates? I don’t believe that it was just dumb luck.” He says.

“Of course not; I sold some samurai blueprints to someone in the cube. I put some samurai-like code in there that would send the coordinates to me.”

“You have a samurai blueprint?”

“Nope, but I have the blueprints for the next-gen holoprojectors. Put them in the shape of the mask of a recently very vocal samurai, and people believe it.”

“And what if that samurai finds out?”

“Well, I hope they don’t mind me selling a knockoff version. Like, I kind of just assumed they had better things to do.”

“Wait, you said you did it in samurai code. Do you know how samurai code works? How do you even get to that point?”

“Well, I was in a position where getting replaced meant death or worse, so I tried my best to become irreplaceable, which included learning different coding languages no one was proficient with.”

“And are you irreplaceable?”

“I don’t know. I kind of went for a different strategy after a while. Anyway, so unless someone can do that, you have nothing to fear, and at that point, I think they are more than qualified to get in.” I say, trying my best to get out of the topic.

“That is good. Well, it's been nice, but I still have some stuff to do, and it is almost evening, so I'll be off.” He says before he stands up and heads out.

“Well, he ran away.” Yui says.

“Yeah, well, he was trying to hack into our personal gear, so I just sent him a file with his own address on it.”

“Why would he try that?” Yui asks, confused.

“Don’t know, to test us maybe, or to check if we are telling the truth. “ I say. “It does not really matter, but we should probably go back to it so we can sleep a bit."

“Sure, sounds good.” Yui says. “But what was the different strategy you used?”

“I slept with the CEO’s daughter.” I say before logging off.

I arrive back in the car. Eva has fallen asleep; it seems her chair reclined backwards. while John is still awake, paying attention to the road. I stretch out the kinks in my body, that have formed after sitting in the same position for so long, and take a look outside. Well, at least we made it outside of the city, so traffic has let up a bit. Instead of starting and stopping, we are now moving at five kilometres an hour.

“You awake?” John asks. “Did you win?”

“Uhm, kind of, yeah. We were not really asleep, but I guess it kind of looks like that,”

“I see. How would you rate your team cohesion after this mission?” he asks.

“it was good. We work well together, and Yui compensates in the fields that I lack.” I say.

“Really?” Yui also asks, having come out of the mesh.

“You don’t think so?” I ask, a bit confused.

“Well, you came up with the code so that we could skip most of the trial.” She explains in a shy tone.

“I mean, sure, but I could only get to it because you were distracting everyone, so I would say it was a team effort. Also, looking at the other trials, I am sure we would have been able to clear most of them anyway, so what I did just saved us a bunch of time.” I say.

“You either win or lose as a team. It does not matter who shot the final shot.” John cuts in. “Anyway, both of you should go to sleep. We are driving all night, and being well-rested when you arrive would be great.”

“Thanks, Dad, but what about you?” I ask.

“Someone has to control the car. So I sleep when Katharina wakes up.”

“I can also control the car.” I say, almost out of instinct.

“We are not in any place to get out and switch seats.”

“That is fine. I can control it from here.” I say as I take out a cable. “Here, plug this in, and you should be fine.”

After setting up the program that would allow me to remote control the car, John, or Heinrich, also goes to sleep.

After listening to everyone breathing as they sleep, I let out a deep breath.

Are you okay, Evelin?

‘I am. Yes, it's just I miss Cierra. I know that sounds crazy, but I do.’ I say.

Have you considered telling her that?

‘And how would I do that? Just by calling her and saying that I miss her?’

Yes. That would be a good start.

‘I don’t want to wake everyone up, so that is going to be a bit hard.’

You can use your digitised construct for the call. Lyssa will monitor the roads for you in the meantime.

‘That would work, yes, thank you.’

Lyssa is always happy to help.