After we left the HQ Darren walked beside me, and softly asked me:

“Is something wrong? You sounded so, I don’t know, down.”

I sighed while I looked ahead at the van.

“I am tired. Tired of this BS. Tired of this situation. Tired of being in a war zone. Tired of having to shoulder the load. Simply tired.

I don’t know how much longer I can do this. I am… really am tempted to write off my losses and relocate. I got out of Seattle because the idiot gangs and the idiot peacekeepers played war there.”

“The way you say it, you may be tempted but won’t do it. Why not?”

I had to chuckle mirthlessly. “I gave my word. Not only to Mr. Walker, but you and your gang, to Jacky to the former slaves, and of course, I gave my word to Frankel that he would regret not letting me go. And I keep my word if I can in any way possible.”

He chuckled with much more humor than I had managed.

“You know, people keeping their word is not normal in our world. You might be one of the last examples of a species dying out.”

“I fear you are right. Nonetheless, I choose to be better than those you can’t trust. I know it is not a typical choice, but it was mine to make and I will stand by it.”

“Why? I mean, I get that it is important for you. But it can’t be reputation. I don’t think many people give a flying shit about the other side keeping their word. They don’t expect it and won’t believe it. So why cling to it then?”

“If your honor is the only thing you can call your own when you grow up, you become strangely attached to it.

I have, obviously, more now, but my honor is still my most prized possession.

I will not sacrifice it. If I give my best and lose, then I have lost, but I will have lost with my honor intact.

If I do not give my word and don’t enter the fray in the first place, then if I walk away, my honor is intact.

But I gave my word, and I entered the fray, so I will give my best. It may not be enough, but my honor will be intact.”

After that, we were silent and napped a bit in the car.

When we reached the fortress I took a moment to come back to reality. The infernal racket of the installation crew did continue unabashed, and I spent a moment looking over the workers before I looked at the progress Mia made. She had, unsurprisingly, the second heart disassembled, but surprisingly she damaged only one part that the first heart had yet not yielded. So one part to go.

Then I was left with nothing to do for the first time in weeks.

I took a few minutes to simply enjoy doing nothing before I moved to one of the cleared offices to plug into Precious. While I had no immediate needs, I had enough other things on the back burner that I could fill years of work.

So I began my dive.

As always I did my routine, but there was nothing new in the black labs. The universities did not wield any interesting information either. Lastly, I logged into the Abyss.

I did not expect anything new, so it was a surprise that there was a message waiting for me.

Argonaughty had contacted me and sent me a vid-record, along with a short note.

Intrigued I opened the recording, after a careful examination, of course, we are talking about Abyss after all.

The recording was, of course about my encounter with Vasilienkov.

On the right was Vasi, untended, sweating, red in the face, and on the left I could admire Argo’s usual avatar, the tall, muscular Greek warrior with very naughty accents.

It was Argo who opened the session.

“You wanted something Mr. Vasilienkov?”

“Yes! I wanted something! I wanted security for my enterprise, my data, and my accounts! You promised me that! You told me I was save from nearly every hacker on the planet! So HOW DOES IT COME THAT THIS LITTLE CUNT SIMPLY DESTROYED MY ENTIRE NETWORK?”

“Calm down. What little cunt? And what happened to your network?”

I could see Vasi take a deep breath.

“God damn it, I… ok, calm down. I can do that.

Ok, earlier today I had a little argument with a young who… woman who recently moved to New York. She was pretty pissed off afterward. Not even ten minutes later she called me again and told me that I would be a valuable example. That’s when my computer system shut down. Everything is gone. EVERY FUCKING THING!”

It was, naturally hard to read Argo’s animated avatar.

“All right, when was the last backup? If you kept the schedule I developed for you then you should have, moment, let me look it up, ah yes, you should make a backup every three days. So how old was the latest backup?”

“Yesterday, the backup was from yesterday.”

“So, you lost half a day. I can dig that you are pissed, but simply use the backup and everything should run fine.”

“Nothing runs fine. The backup is shot! And the one before that! And before that! I have gone back the last five months and not a single one worked. What is that shit you sold me? IT IS NOT WORKING FOR FUCK’S SAKE!”

Oh wow, so close to the grand slam. Only one month more and he would have wiped out the whole new system. Whelp, it was nice anyway.

“Mr. Vasilienkov, I did not sell you any shit. I tested your backup system myself when I installed your new system.”

“Yes, the new system. The one you told me would give pause even to an Abyss-hacker. The one you told me would stand up to virtually anything that might fuck me up. Well, guess what, it FUCKING DID NOT DO THAT!”

“Yeah, that is harsh. Something is not right here. You said it took ten minutes before this broad shot down your system?”

“Less than that. I paid good money for good security. So how come it did not work?”

“One moment, I am looking at it right now. Ok, first, the monitoring system should have squealed if somebody was fucking around, so why didn’t it?”

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“HOW THE FUCK SHOULD I KNOW? FUCK IT, how can you look it up? The whole system is dead.”

“I told you the monitoring system is offsite. It is still there.”

Oops, that was a blunder. How could I miss an offsite link like that? I would have to look into that later.

“Ok, I see when the order to purge the data was given.

Wow, you are right. Whoever it was took less than five minutes.

They somehow got their grubby mitts on your login data. The system says it was you that fucked up everything. Hm… ok, that was definitely not you. That is… rad. Maybe I can find out how she did it…”

“WHAT?!?”

“Oh, sorry. Got how your backups crapped out.

The bird reprogrammed the firmware in the drives to destroy the crystals if somebody tries to use them. Seriously, that is megarad. So evil man, I think I am in love. But that does not tell me… oh fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”

“What? What did you find out?”

“You said it was a young woman? Shit man, you stepped into it, man. Fuck I did not know she had come out here. Fuck!”

“What are you talking about?”

“Good news, bad news time man. And the good news is slim. The system I sold you did not fail. It would have worked as I told you. Except… and that is the bad news. And we are talking nuking from orbit bad news here.

There are two people on this fucking dirtball that could march through your security like that. I am one of them. The other, you remember that I bought the basic program from a techie from the Abyss?”

“Yeah, so there was a backdoor she found?”

“Nope. The techie is Seraphim. And she is known for not selling shit with backdoors. Fucking point is she doesn’t need to.

The core of your security was created by her.

She knows how it works.

She knows how it identifies goodies and baddies. And you, my friend, managed to get her pissed off at you. So what did you do to her?”

I could see Vasi getting defensive.

“Hey, I did nothing. This cunt simply overreacted. Was triggered or something. How should I know why she got off into the deep end?”

“Mr. Vasilienkov, we are talking about Seraphim.

She is literally famous in the Abyss that if you treat her fairly you can’t get a better trading partner. But if you try to rip her off, you are toast.

I know of no less than three hackers from the Abyss who tried to steal from her.

Their boards melted. Can you imagine that?

Their fucking boards melted man!

So for her to stomp your system a new one you have to have done something to make her mad.

You don’t want her mad at you.

Even if she can’t reach you, she is the fucking main tech for fucking Spectre. She can simply ask the sixth-best hacker alive for a favor. And she would get it. So, are you going to tell me how you fucked up, or are we done here?”

Vasi visibly sunk down into his chair.

“But she is a nobody. Unimportant. She got here and ordered a fucking industrial fabber.

This little girl bought a $12 million industrial fabber simply as that.

So she threw 12 million away to play with some toys, so I decided she can do with the smaller one. I mean, a little girl does not need a full-sized industrial fabber. And I decided to keep the difference.

Argo, despite being the animated avatar, facepalmed.

“Oh, man. Oh, man. That is not fucked up that is strapping a pocket nuke to your balls and setting it off. You have fucking destroyed your reputation man.

Nobody will trust you anymore.

Not my problem though. But just for your information, she builds the best fucking boards one can buy. So yes, she fucking can use an indyfab.”

The snarl returned to Vasi’s face.

“So what? She’s gone too far. Way too far. How much will it cost me for you to destroy her matrix presence?”

“Shit man, did you listen to anything that I just told you or am I background noise for you? She is the main tech for Spectre. I won’t touch her in any way.”

“Then find me another hacker to take her out.”

“Won’t happen man. Shit, first, we are talking Spectre here.

He is one of the top 10.

These guys are practically gods compared to us lowly peons.

The only ones who seriously would risk his anger are the nihilistic assholes and the others of the top 10.

But wait, there’s more. Seraphim is protected, man.

There are orders of, one moment, ah yes, there it is, she is not subject of any pranks, feuds, or other destructive activities in the Abyss.”

“So you won’t help me? You won’t even repair the damage?”

“The damage is simple, man. You can piss off the data of the last five months, get new crystal burners, and restore the latest backup you did not frack, or you can ask her for your data back.”

“What do you mean by asking her for my data back? Do you mean she managed to do all that damage and still stole all my data? In less than ten minutes?”

“Yup, she did. Wrap your brain around the fact that the moment she entered your system, it rolled over and played dead like a well-trained dog. It only took her as long as it did because she stole the data. Otherwise, it would have been less than a minute.”

“And there is no other way than to beg for the data back? I don’t want to come begging to the little bitch.”

“Should have thought about that earlier man. I can’t help you there.

And FYI, I don’t think she will give it back. So the best you can do is move. Your rep is shot, your data is gone, and if I know her right, most of your money is visiting with her.

You are done here in New York.”

The next couple of minutes consisted of Vasi cursing up a storm. When he slowed down, Argo talked again.

“Are you done then? Sorry man, but you fucked up and I can’t help you. If there is nothing else, I have other things to do.”

That was the last of the recording. I have to confess it lifted my mood considerably. Unfortunately, it also informed me about a small problem I had.

Apparently, Argo had linked my account with Vasi with my identity as Seraphim.

True, Seraphim was not particularly high on the most wanted lists, but it was never good if somebody could identify a hacker.

Anonymity was our greatest weapon.

While I pondered the implications I received a com request. From Argo of course. When I accepted I was greeted in a private chat room by his avatar.

“Heya, Sera. Did you watch the vid? Interesting isn’t it? Fuck, you did a number on his systems. And the firmware hack, rad, girl, simply rad. I have to remember that. You aren’t willing to sell that or are you?”

I had to stifle a laugh.

“Yes, I watched it. And that was the intention. I can’t have somebody stealing from me. That is bad for business, you know?”

He lifted his hands in faked surrender while grinning maniacally.

“Sure, girl, sure, nobody here in the Abyss wants to risk it. But honestly, I did not know you moved here to the east coast. How comes?”

I shrugged.

“That is pretty much private. Please don’t pry into it. But the short version is life got a bit too hot for me in RL on the west coast.”

“Yeah, we have all been there one time or another. But why I’m calling you, I want to upgrade my board. What would it cost me for you to build one for me?”

“Uh, sorry, but at the moment that is not possible. I lack the tools to make the tools to build a board. I am sure that you caught that I just moved. Well, I had most of my workshop behind. The best I can do is to sell you the schematics. That would come up to $750k for the Mk IV.”

I called up a 3d image of the Mk IV.

“Of course, the Mk IV is the unpopulated modular board. And don’t be angry, but you are as far as I know not the person who can balance a high-end board.”

He chuckled.

“Yeah, no prob. I know bestest how I am. And no I don’t want an empty Mk IV. Well, of course, I would like an Mk IV, but it would be much better if you could tailor one for me. I get that with the workshop, so the schematics are all right.”

I had to sigh.

“Tailoring is, unfortunately also at the moment not possible.

I landed neck-deep into the sewers here and have to work myself out of it. The actual designing of the board may be fast, less than a day, but I would have to spend more time than I have on getting to know your style to balance it.

This amount of time I will have in six weeks at the absolute earliest, and that only if nothing else goes wrong. We are talking more likely about four to six months before there is a realistic probability.”

Then I had a stray thought.

“That reminds me… I just started preliminary work on the next generation. I’ve got access to some new, pretty interesting technologies that should make a new board much better.

As soon as I find the time for getting it done, it should be a matter of days to have the Mk V and Mk VI available.

It would probably be better for you if you waited so long. Otherwise, as I said, you can get the Mk IV schematics.”

He rocked back.

“Wow, next-gen? Am I the first to learn about it?”

I stared at him with a stony expression, assisted by my avatar's lack of expression.

“Of course not. Spectre knows, and Spectre will get the first Mk V.

I get the next Mk V. And then I sell the Mk VI.

But outside of Spectre and me, you are the first. It is really a brand new development. The CPU is not even designed yet, much less the rest of the board.”

“Sure, girl, sure. I will wait for that. A new Seraphim generation and I am among the first. Excellent.”

“Another thing, you told Vasi that I am protected? What did you mean with that?”

“Come on, Sera. You have to know. You are quite literally among the top three techs in the Abyss. And you are the only one of the top three that is considered completely honest.

What do you think? That we can walk into the next Kawamoto store and get their best cyberwar tech?

Techs of your caliber are scarce on our side of the law.

To get one that we can trust… that is ecstasy, girl, pure ecstasy. And the big guns have commed that they will land like a ton of bricks on anybody who drives you away.”

I had to think about that. I had no idea that my expertise was that valuable. Sure, I was good, but that good?

“Oh… wow. No, I did not know that. Thank you for telling me that.”