The holo-vid showed an alien planet, blue grass over a light green sky. A man in a spacesuit ran towards a spaceship in the distance. A gigantic T-Rex with wings flew after him, its teeth big as jagged hills and its tongue a monster on its own right. With every beating of wings, the earth shook.

The man turned towards the monster without stopping and brandished a toy gun that looked like one from an early mid-seventies, low budgeted cartoon. It shoots real lasers, though, because the red rays made the T-Rex roar and recoil. The man won precious few seconds of distance over the monster, but it recovered fast and flew at an impossible speed… But the ship was right in front of him! He was able to reach it!

The T-Rex’s jaws, huge like the pits of hell, closed around man, ship; and the hill where they stood. A red tint covered the screen while vision blurred and retreated into a panoramic.

Two words appeared on screen: Game Over.

A darkly lit room with gray walls and expensive floor panels. The ambient inside was conspiratorial, the kind of quiet that desperately tried to hide something. The room was mostly empty, except for a conference table, executive chairs, and the holo-projector. There were only two people in the room. The first was the CIA director and the second was The Woman.

She had no official rank. Her gray suit wasn’t expensive. If you read her job description, you would find a cozy bureaucratic position that involved signing obscure trading laws pertaining taxes overseas. She was in her mid-thirties, had pale blond hair, and aside from the cold eyes she looked like any young mother you could find in a junior soccer game.

Yet, if you somehow avoided the heavy layers of security of her bedroom, you would find an encrypted phone line connected straight to a famous office inside the White House.

Her name was Stefania Caputi. She had the nagging suspicion the CIA was losing its touch.

“So you made me trek across the world for a video-game, John?” she asked the man. She used the kind of tone people had with a special-needs child. She raised a perfectly trimmed eyebrow at him. The Director shivered at her disapproval and he hoped she wouldn’t notice. When sharks smelled blood in the water…

“Ma’am, we’ve reasons to believe this is a matter of national security.”

“You mean the Antarctica dossier.” It was not a question. The dossier was classified to hell and back: Only the top government officials could access it. Yet he wasn’t surprised when she showed knowledge of it. Her job, after all, involved knowing things. The Woman was damned good at it.

“Yes, the blasted dossier,” he confirmed.

“I thought you took care of that leak?”

“That was an accident, despite what others would believe,” he said. Then he shrugged. “But, yes, the leaks were plugged. Accident or not.”

It was her turn to shrug. “Then you shouldn’t have any problems, John. Unless you got sloppy in your job.”

“If you thought that, I’d be out of a job already, ma’am. There is no leak. And yet this game…”

“Is just like any other game in the market, right? Kids have been toying with Virtual Reality Systems for years now. The military loves it. They are very interested in the socio-political data they are getting from games like this. I believe they value it at a trillion dollars.”

"She’s probing me," thought the Director. "Is there something she doesn’t know already? She knows why I'm here."

Rune Universe was no game.

“In a way, it is. Ma’am, I’ll be frank with you, the same data structure found in Antarctica can be found in this game. We believe that’s intentional.”

“You think the Patel’s were traitors?” Stefania Caputi hadn’t blinked since they began talking. It was eerie. Like she wasn’t human at all.

“Well, we can’t ask them, can we?” The Director shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. The signal is there. We believe it’s an informational bomb. We have reasons to believe the Key to the payload is in a third party possession. It could surface at any time.”

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“And…?”

The Director took a deep breath.

“I want you to stop blocking the CIA attempts to close Rune Universe, ma’am. We need to keep the public out of that software before something terrible happens.”

“I see. And by that, you mean, someone else gets access to this ‘bomb’ before you can.”

Shame made the Director’s face flush with red. “The States have many enemies, madam Caputi. My job entails ensuring the survival of society as we know it.”

“Ah, of course, that must be it.” Stefania Caputi was ready to finish the conversation.

“Will you give my recommendation to the President?”

“Dear John, of course, I won’t.”

The Director recoiled as if struck. The Woman had to laugh at the sight.

“What do you mean? National security is at stake—”

“You may have spent too much time as head of the CIA. It may be a matter of national security, as you say, but security isn’t the be all end all of a country. Much less for the States,” Stefania Caputi took out a nano-USB from the pocket of her suit and placed it on top of the holo-projector. “I’m talking Power, John. With a capital ‘P’. A country that has real Power has no need to chase security. No one could dare attack it. That’s why the President hasn’t been answering your calls.”

“You knew…” The Director’s anger was now enough to overcome his fear of The Woman on his own. “You do not understand what you are risking…”

“I think I have a fairly better idea than you do,” said Stefania Caputi. The holo-projector finished processing the archives of her USB and displayed it instead of the Rune Universe promotional video. It was a 3D figure that occupied the whole space atop the conference table. Thousands of red data nodes connected to each other by blazing red lines. “This is the software cluster representation of Rune Universe, launch version. As you know, the Company that owns the servers has made no update, no server maintenance. Nothing. And yet…”

The image changed. The data spider-web grew more complex, its borders outgrew the frontiers of the table. After a moment, the holo-projector did a panoramic view over it as to better showcase its size.

“One year after launch, Rune Universe has a build twice as complex, John,” Stefania Caputi said.

The Director couldn’t believe it. Stefania Caputi associates had hidden the new software version from his organization and frozen any advances towards the matter. He had suspected it was a military ploy to preserve its valuable data source, but now…

“It’s a virus—”

“You are not authorized to categorize it as anything. But no, this is no virus, dear John. This is not a ‘bomb’ either. A bomb is something you use once and then forget it. You are looking at a weapon. This is something we point and shoot every damn time we please. We must own this weapon.”

The Woman withdrew the nano-USB and walked towards the door. Only the racket of her heels was heard in the room. The Director didn’t stop her. Then she turned around:

“Next time you ask to speak to the President, know we are both in agreement on this. If you won’t cooperate, at least don’t try to interfere. Otherwise, I’m afraid I won’t guarantee your continued employment.”

She left with that, leaving the Director frustrated and defeated. He was hired to protect his country from danger. Now his country walked foolishly towards a greater threat than the Corps Wars of 2033. And That Woman was responsible.

He slumped over his chair, thinking of a vengeance he knew he would never be able to pull off.

There was something that could’ve given him some comfort if he had known about it. Something that had escaped both himself and Stefania Caputi. It was this: they were both wrong about Rune Universe.

It was no weapon. It was no bomb. Yet, it was terribly dangerous.