She shook her head.
The EPED had wired the funds to her account this morning, and she left the bank with her wristcon clutched in one hand and the other supporting it. The train zipped through the skyport and into the airways above the city, and she settled into her seat with an exhale.
Now that she had money, it seemed like everyone around her somehow knew. Loosening her hold on her wristcon, she put her earplugs in and looked out the dirty window to her side. Smog peered back at her.
She tapped her finger on her wristcon to the music blaring in her ears and tried to relax. When she didn’t think she could take her unease anymore, she glanced once more at the people around her and slipped on her glasses. Her media site popped up, and her glasses scanned her pupils, logging her in.
And there it was, right at the top.
Another new message from Cypher. A guy who contacted her hours after her first post on her page a week ago.
Her ‘real’ fake Cyborg teammate.
Or so he claimed.
Every day, a new message waited for her, and though she hadn’t yet responded—trolls will be trolls—her worry increased with each one. What started off as merely requiring an eye roll, a delete, and a block turned into something more sinister. Not blatant harassment, but something uncomfortable and subtle, building more each day.
She didn’t know why he targeted her, but she had her suspicions. Some of her followers were anti-cyborg, artificial intelligence, and mecha. She’d lost a few after her announcement, so it might have been one of them.
But this…was a little extreme.
The block should’ve worked.Vee stared at the new message notification. She didn’t understand it. An IP block to another IP block was absolute. In this day and age, one’s IP was like your secondary social security number. You only had one. Any more and you needed special privileges… or you worked for the government.
One’s IP was as sacred as your thumbprint and eye scan. It was your virtual personal identity.
But the guy came back. She blocked him the next day, and he came back again.
It shouldn’t have been possible.
She contacted the server her site ran on, and they said they didn’t know what she was talking about. There’d been no blocks coming from her end, and this ‘other Cypher’ wasn’t reading on their end either. She took screenshots and sent the images to them. But they claimed they never received them, and when she went to load the images again on her page, they were gone from her computer.
She contacted the EPED after several days of fighting with the site’s server but couldn’t get through to Nightheart. A woman, Mia, gave her a half-assed response saying not to worry about it, and thattheywould look into it.
As the smoggy city zipped past her, the others on the train fell from her mind.
Sweat slickened her brow.
Vee stared at the message notification for the rest of the ride, only stopping when it was her time to disembark and take the railway home. She didn’t stop for groceries or to check on her elderly neighbor down the hall, but went straight to her apartment and locked herself in with a shudder.
Perhaps she wasn’t paranoid about having money.Perhaps I’m nervous because of him.The stranger on the network.
Bees, her tabby cat, came sauntering up to her and rubbed his face against her leg. She scratched her baby behind the ears and went to her mini kitchen to feed him. After making herself a sandwich, she slipped off her shoes and settled on her bed, looking around.
Nothing had been moved, nothing was out of place, but she remained tense.
She lived in a five-hundred-square-foot studio. From the entryway, her bed was in the back left-hand corner, her kitchen in an alcove to the right, opposite her bed. There was a detached bathroom with a cleansing stall next to the kitchen, the only space fully partitioned except for a closet between her bed and the kitchen on the back wall.
With only one window, she bought a giant mirror to stand next to the door to the right, giving the illusion of more space. And in the open space between her bed and the door was her equipment—a giant square box without walls.
Straps hung from the corner poles to keep her anchored when she played standing. But there was a chair positioned in the middle—currently plugged in—that could be moved in and out of the box at will. The top was made of metal and plastic, with projector tech and additional outlets for add-ons attached. It ran parallel to the ceiling.
There was a big old chair in the front corner on the left that’d seen better days. But it was her favorite place to study, with Bee’s cat tree beside it. Her walls were decorated in cheap cloth tapestries, most depicting outer space, some with whimsical designs. It was cramped but clean, and best of all, it was hers.
She moved in several years ago, and so far, it had served her well. Paper-thin walls and old appliances included.
With three million, I can finally move into a bigger place.One with better security.Yet the thought only made her tired. Her eyes dragged to the floor.
I have no time to move, not until after the game.
