“Sorry to be calling so late,” Rose said, when Althea answered the call.

  “What’s the matter? Did something happen?” Althea asked, quite surprised to be hearing from Rose so late. The anxiety in Rose’s voice was hard to miss, which was cause for great concern. Althea had always been Rose’s confidant in times of uncertainty. She’d been there for her during her struggles as an adolescent, providing a safe, warm getaway for her to rage through her feelings and insecurities. Many in the Path described Althea as an Earth Mother — eternally patient and forgiving — but she had been much more to Rose.

  “Yeah…I…didn’t know who else to call. I’ve had quite the evening,” she said.

  “D’you need me to come over? I could bring over a new blend of calming chamomile tea I’m trying out, help you chill out…” Althea said, with a voice that was soft and warm, it was almost like you could smell the hot tea floating in the air.

  “Naw, I don’t want to be a hassle, just wanted to hear your voice, chat with you a little bit,” Rose said.

  She recounted the bizarre events of the past few days. Starting with the hack that had spooked her, followed by the more offensive and violent affair at her front door, to ultimately being ripped out of a locked-in state by her neighbor when he removed her Noesis halo.

  “D’you know who they were or who they were working for?” Althea asked.

  “No, you know how it is… Well, I guess maybe it’s a bit less secretive and cloak and dagger-y and all in your field,” Rose said, trying not to sound dismissive. Althea’s area of expertise was botany, the main reason why the Path was often linked to witchcraft. She was why many came to the Path to Sunrise for natural remedies. She’d been one of the few to take on preserving many useful and colorful plants. When the scientists had taken to creating super-plants — plants with the sole purpose of eating air pollutants — they hadn’t taken into full account how it would affect the look in the street. These plants were mostly vine-type climbers, without flowers or special colors. They needed very little light, nutrients, or water. What they also hadn’t considered is that these vines would take over and smother other plants, which were already struggling from lack of direct sunlight and temperature drop.

  “Have you spoken to Maelcum about what happened yet?” Althea asked.

  “I’ve been contemplating telling him. But honestly, the way he gets, I don’t know if it’s the right way to go…”

  “Well, you know the way I see it, dear. Maelcum’s a good man, and he would do anything to protect you, but honestly, if you can figure this out without him I think we can all be spared a lot of unnecessary drama,” Althea said, not trying to hide that she thought that Maelcum, while a good Path leader and okay father figure for Rose, often dramatized situations and made them that much harder to deal with. A ‘flair for theatrics’ is what she often ascribed to him.

  The two talked for a little while longer, calming Rose down significantly and strengthening her resolve to figure out who had hacked her so intimately. How, and why.

  Rose was a stinky mess. She’d spent the better part of her afternoon in the gym, lifting some additional weights after her kickboxing class had finished. She always tried to spend time in the gym when she was feeling anxious. She plopped back down in her dentistry chair, the vinyl sticking to her body as the sweat on her skin and in her clothes felt like they fused her to it, and decided to take a look at the situation analytically. The hacker had accessed her personal implants. The implants themselves were nothing special. Any black market chopdoc probably had gear that was technically better, sleeker, and more commercially viable — but she had gone for a Chinese white-label producer as they were cheap, available in bulk, and highly moddable. She had installed her own software and security on these implants, not trusting corporate software anywhere near her. Deducing from her own set of vulnerabilities, she concluded that the only piece of tech she owned that she hadn’t written the code for was her Noesis.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  “No way…” she muttered, as she looked at the device, examining it for any signs of physical alteration. She found nothing.

  Absolute in her conviction that it had to have been the origin, she hooked the Noesis halo up to a signal reader before putting it on. The reader was going to log all the connections and packets going in and out of her Noesis, which she would then examine.

  She turned the device on and closed her eyes, instantly transported to a world in which she was commander of a space fleet. Not feeling like speaking to anyone or engaging other players, however, she drew back to a private room and tried checking settings that could be responsible for her system breach. It wouldn’t be the first time a hack had originated in the game, from a rival organization looking to take over a sector and fleet, but the sophistication necessary for how she had been hacked went above the knowledge of any rival leaders she’d met.

  Content that she had probably gathered enough incoming and outgoing connection data, Rose decided to call it a night and turn off the Noesis. And discovered she couldn’t operate her arms in the real world, like a strange form of paralysis. Panicking, she kicked, hoping her convulsions would be enough to slip off the device.

  In what felt like a collage of thoughts driven through a distortion pedal that was drilling into her head, her legs stopped responding too. She was stuck in the Noesis, with no way to get out and no idea of what was happening around her in the real world.

  Two men in AR visors were captured on her cameras in the hallway, making quick work of her door lock.

  They entered her room and found Rose lying, unmoving in her dentistry chair after having struggled enough to crack several surrounding monitors. They inserted a thumb drive in her mainframe and began uploading a full backup of her system to an offsite server for further investigation.

  “We should delete the camera footage. She’ll probably suspect us anyway, but giving her evidence and a clearer look at us might be unwise in the long-run,” the tall, gruff-but-patient man said, expecting Twitchface to take care of the physical act of destroying the cameras and smashing the local backup of the footage. Twitchface gladly set to these acts.

  While the taller guy surveyed the apartment, looking for anything that might be of use to their employer, Twitchface took advantage of the opportunity to study Rose’s body. Lying there, unable to struggle or resist, he ran the back of his hand along her temple, down to her cheek, along her neck and collarbone.

  He looked at her in admiration. His feelings were complex — a strange blend of love and lust, mixed with a genuine, instinctive fear, much like the fear wild predators still fill us with.

  The leader caught on to what was happening and urged him to finish the job so they could leave. Twitchface nodded, snapping out of his dreamlike focus, and rejoined his colleague to head out. They pulled the door shut as best they could, given that they’d forced and broken the lock, and disappeared like ghosts into the fog.

  Hours later, when Harlow awoke Rose from her digital nightmare, she felt violated. She wasn’t injured, nor could she sense anything wrong with her body, apart from being sore from lying so long unmoving, but that feeling lingered.

  After coming out of her initial shock and confirming that Harlow had no bad intentions, she explained what had happened to her.

  “Did you at least find whatever it was you were looking for in that neural shit?” he asked.

  “Fuck if I know, man, I haven’t exactly had time to see if my reader recorded anything.” Rose stood up, feeling the tension in her muscles and cracking her neck. It was a weird sensation, having suddenly regained all movement while she had been properly paralyzed a few minutes ago.

  Harlow checked the reader’s cracked monitor and saw nothing out of the ordinary. All IPs listed were NeuraVision. He visually scanned them a few times to make sure, but couldn’t find anything.

  “I don’t know Rose. I think it’s clear that the people who forced your door are probably the same DoT. guys you mentioned. As for the whole paralysis thing… I’ve heard rumors that Noesis glitches can cause stuff like that. Maybe this was all just coincidence? I mean, there’s no weird outside connections here,” he said, pointing to the log.

  “Just…fuck off ‘Low. I’ll figure it out.”