The Hacker

Sebastian set his food down, pushing it away. Suddenly, he wasn’t hungry anymore. Something about what he was about to tell June and what her reaction could be just made his stomach turn. He pursed his lips, looking away for a moment as he gathered his thoughts. He ran his hand down his face and turned back to June. “I created a program for a Fire Sale. That was what Kishan turned me in for,” he said. He’d never told June what it was exactly that he’d gotten in trouble for, just that Kishan was the one who betrayed him. “Kishan and I came up with the pseudocode when we were drunk and I don’t think he actually thought I’d write it, but I did.” When Bas was arrested, the code was taken away from him, presumably destroyed or taken into the government’s custody for them to sit on until they found a good use. Whether or not the code was no longer written down, Bas had a good memory and he had a good chance of being able to write the code down again. “I think GAIA got a hold of the code in my head or whatever…used them for the Geists. I recognized some parts of their code,” he said, remembering how he wrote certain functions in his code a specific way so he would know if his code was ever stolen. “It was modified for the Geists, but I think it was all a test for GAIA before it’s released into the world. GAIA will use it to completely rewrite the framework for society. All from my code.”

Sebastian had never spoken about what happened between him and Kishan, what had made friend turn against friend. She was caught a little off guard that he was mentioning it now, but she just watched him and listened. Her appetite also waned suddenly and she ended up setting down her food too. “So you don’t think Kishan was actually involved?” she questioned, her voice low. His initial theory had revolved around their friend somehow surrendering the code for GAIA to use, whether it was willingly done or not was still up in the air. “You think GAIA took it from you?” June’s tone was soft but serious, asking him to be honest with her. She’d had his back before, and she would continue to do so, but she needed to know everything. She needed to know where they truly stood.

Fuck. Out of everything they had faced inside The Grid, the Geists had been the worst opponents they had faced. It was frightening to think how the code that shaped them could affect the real world if were released on such a grand scale. “Well, there has to be a loophole of some kind,” the mentioned. It was what they did, creators like them put hidden threats in their own work in case it was ever stolen or used against them. “If this is based on your code, there has to be a way to stop it, right? Please tell me you put something in there that could debilitate or override it if it was ever taken from you”.

Well, holy shit, who would have thought that two people who used to hate each other’s guts would really end up together? Though June had to admit she’d been pleasantly surprised when Zara told her Javier had proposed little after their third anniversary. Perhaps the hacker would never truly see to eye with him, but at the very least she knew Javier was totally and irrevocably in love with her dear friend. That was enough. Zara deserved that happiness and that stability after all the shit she went through with her family, especially with her dad... In between the work June kept doing regarding The Grid and her job at Turing, she found some time to help Zara with some of the planning. Luckily neither the groom nor the bride wanted a big wedding, only a small ceremony with close friends and family. And here they were now.

June watched with a smile as the couple exchanged their vows and Javier’s brother, Ricardo, officiated the ceremony. One of her best friends was a wife now. It was so odd to think about it, especially when she felt so far removed from anything related to that life. Marriage wasn’t even something she considered; she always drove people away, people always left. “This is so weird,” she said, glancing over at Sebastian, “Good weird. But still weird”. Fortunately, a few members of what remained of their little gang were invited, otherwise June’s anxious and taciturn self when it came to big social events would have probably left little after the ‘I do’.

“Um, yeah, it’s already 6:30,” Shadia said, laughing. “Time flies when you’re hard at work, huh?” She walked over, wrapping her best friend in a huge hug. It had only been a few months, but it felt like it had been years. Finally, she pulled away and draped one arm over June’s shoulders as she sat down next to her. “Oh, what would I do without you,” Shadia replied. She leaned back in her seat as she listened to the summary of everything that had happened since she left. “A civil war? What is this? A Marvel movie?” She furrowed her brow and tilted her head to the side as she contemplated what June told her. Maybe the whole “civil war” thing was why she hadn’t heard or gotten much info from her friends when she would call or text them. Shadia had never been Sebastian’s biggest fan and she was a little hesitant to agree with his suspicions. “Are you all still going in? If it’s been like this for months, how is everyone handling it?” Everything seemed to have gone south when Kishan died. They called him the anarchist, but maybe he was actually the glue that held them all together and kept them levelheaded. “You don’t agree with Sebastian about deleting Kishan’s program, do you?”

June scoffed, all too aware of how she could lose the track of time when sitting before a computer. Thank God for Shadia, pulling her away from it on this occasion before another one of the hacker’s rabbit hole descents. She hugged her friend back, feeling a small sense of relief in having someone else around who was very important in her life. It was an added bonus that she could also get Shadia’s take on the whole maddening issues within the group. “If it was we’d beat the fucking AI in the end,” she sighed, moving a hand to her temple. G.A.I.A. had given her more headaches than she could count; both figuratively by making her try to think to exhaustion about solutions, and literally as the AI’s programs put up so much of a fight within the Grid.

“Yeah, I am at least. Sebastian does too from time to time. Most of the group stepped back because they’re actual sane people with lives outside this thing, or to avoid any fights. So I guess they’re dealing with it by not dealing with it”. The hacker sounded rather indifferent because she was beyond the point of trying to sway anyone into joining every new ‘mission’ into the virtual reality. Jack had been there some times. Elena and Sal as well, though with less frequency than ever before.

When Shadia asked about Kishan’s program, June shrugged and waved her hands. “I don’t know,” she admitted, saying those few words she hated saying. “But I’m clearly not the best person to be making decisions here,” she said somewhat bitterly. “It’s my fault G.A.I.A. is on the loose. I brought a fucking psychopath into our lives because I thought he would be of help”. Fuck Jacob, for real. The fact that she’d gotten a cryptic message from him a few days back only made her worry that she’d be fighting on three damn fronts now: inside the Grid with every twisted thing G.A.I.A. put in there, with the group for every opposing ideas there were, and against Jacob out here in the real world. “I don’t want to see Kishan go. I really don’t, losing one part of him was hard enough, I don’t want to see what’s left of him be gone for good. But I don’t know what the hell to do at this point”.

Sebastian snorted and smirked at her. “I’m practically Mother Theresa,” he said. “Obviously I did it to get bonus points with the big guy in the sky.” He took a bite of his food and then set the plate down on the coffee table. June had begun to know him too well and sometimes he resented that he let himself get close enough to have someone again who was able to read him. A part of him feared it would end the same way it did with Kishan. “The code,” he said, “for the Geists….” He clenched his jaw and looked away for a second. What was the best way to tell her? Was he bad for hiding it? Even though a lot of it was his code, he had no idea how to stop them. Plus, he was pretty sure that GAIA was able to take the code to be able to adapt it to whatever it wanted to use it for. “Have you ever heard of a Fire Sale?” 

“I think you might need to get a few more bonus points with him if you actually want to get in there,” the hacker stated back in a teasing way, her lips curving into a playful smile. “Just a few,” she added, sounding even more sarcastic. A little chuckle escaped her in the end before she glanced down at her food and took a bite. The two of them ate in silence for a moment. June couldn’t pinpoint when exactly she began to feel so at ease around Sebastian, either talking to him about things she didn’t trust someone else to talk about, or to exist in serene quietness without feeling uncomfortable— no need at all to either walk away or fill the air with empty words. All June knew was that it had been quite some time already.

The hacker looked up when he brought up the Geists. Those things were gone at least, beaten; they should be looking forward, keeping those horrible things in the past and thinking about passing the next levels. It didn’t puzzle her at all that he would bring up though... The group was still dealing with the fallout of Sebastian’s main theory about Kishan’s corrupted code and its link to the Geists. “I have,” June answered, looking at Reyes with a bit of a puzzled look. Where was he going with this? “Why?”.

Shadia was back in Boston for a work trip and even though her schedule was packed, she did have some time to visit some friends. Facetime calls and online chats were alright, but they didn’t compare to the real thing. She headed over towards the new computer science building that replaced the old one and therefore their old computer room. Shadia smiled as she saw a familiar face and headed towards them. “So I see that once I left that everything went to shit,” she said. “Mind telling me everything that went down?”

June and Shadia had been texting and the hacker gave her friend all the details about the new gathering spot they managed to secure in the new building. Jonas had worked on some new hardware that was portable and much easier to conceal in case any unsuspecting staff member of the academy happened to walk in. “Hey. Oh, it’s 6:30 already?” she glanced down at her computer screen to see the time and saw that time had flown by, with Shadia showing up right on time at the hour they agreed. “I mean, I would have begged for you not to go. But I’m an actual good friend who wanted to see you fly away and do your thing,” June replied with some evident sarcasm. “Well, where to start?”. She gestured towards the chair by her side and began giving a summary to Shadia of the suspicions Sebastian brought forward, how Kishan fit into all of it, the way everyone had wildly different opinions on how to go about the mess... “What’s a mission to take down a tyrannical AI without a bit of civil war to spice things up, you know?” she said with a sigh, a tired expression taking over. It was hard enough to deal with The Grid as it was, even more so with a group divided...

“You’re certainly a sight for sore eyes,” Sebastian said, watching as June moved back to her couch. He stepped inside, setting down a box of food from the Japanese restaurant down the block. He’d already been to June’s apartment enough times to know where all the plates and silverware were. It was a familiar routine by now. Bas was laying low in the friend group since tensions were still high, so no one ever really knew that he and June were still hanging around each other. If they did know, they didn’t talk about it to their faces. 

Unfortunately, because of the tensions with the group, Sebastian couldn’t do too much to help June. The best way to keep things somewhat civil between the two sides was to keep Sebastian away from the Grid for now. It seemed to work out since Kishan’s program didn’t spill any beans about the Geists coming from Bas’s old code. Bas himself kept quiet about the code too, but now that June and some other members of the group were able to get through the level, he figured this would be the best time to come clean. Sebastian finished plating the food for June and handed it off to her. He had a little bit of food on a plate for himself and he sat down in the chair across from her. “They were all out of pork, so I just stuck with chicken for you this time. Seemed like a safe bet.”

The hacker was silently grateful that he’d brought some food. She was just regaining her appetite and she hadn’t even bothered to cook something or even order some takeout. Even simple things like that took time to make their way to her mind after particularly harsh experiences at The Grid. She’d practically just been drinking tea, eating some old crackers here and there and the last apple she had in her apartment. Sleeping and checking out mentally to avoid thinking of the horrifying imagery the Geists showed her had taken precedence over anything else.

“Chicken’s fine,” she said as she watched Sebastian move about her kitchen with the same familiarity as if this place was his own. The current situation within the group didn’t really allow for him to show up at their new HQ. June’s meetings with Reyes usually took place here and only occasionally at his apartment. “Thanks,” the girl smiled subtly, reaching out for her plate. She was grateful that Reyes didn’t say anything about her appearance; the dark circles under her eyes, the bruise on her temple, or her general tired aspect. He knew how things were. She’d taken a beating by bizarre, virtual ghosts, and the damage they’d done translated into her actual body. The worst damage was mental, of course, that was the Geists’ target: breaking them down from within, not necessarily harming their avatars. Seeing Sebastian alive and well before her was a nice reminder that everything the Geists showed her was never real. “Damn, I needed this,” June said after a bite, glancing up from her plate to Reyes and taking note of his serious demeanor. “What’s up? I’m sure your priority was coming here to bring me some food out of the kindness of your heart, but what’s the second reason?”.

It had been an absolute, literal nightmare to pass that goddamn level... June was sure she’d be haunted by what the Geists tormented her with for a while, but progress had been made and that was all the hacker wanted to think about. She’d been so tired that day and basically slipped out of Jonas’ apartment without a word. June slept all weekend and called in sick on Monday. It was a better excuse to say she was sick than to say she was recovering from the physical and mental toll of fighting fucked up ghost-like programs inside a virtual reality.

She was on her couch, only half-paying attention to some stupid video on her phone when the buzzer rang. It had become a sort of unspoken rule between herself and Reyes, to check up on each other -without formally admitting that’s what they were doing- whenever they had a rough go at The Grid. The hacker let him in and by the time he reached her floor June had already opened the door, left it ajar for him, and was back on the couch.

Bailey let her speak with out interruption. A year ago an apology from June would have brought her to tears, now Bailey could seem to give a shit. Staring out the window she watch the rain pelt against the window pane as she continued to speak explaining herself. “It took you watching me mourn Kishan to see me as a person…I understand not trusting me, but June I can’t help but think this isn’t just about how I got into the grid.” Bailey trailed off sighing. Now turning to face June she looked her dead in the eyes. “Are you apologizing for how you acted or are you apologizing for what you and Sebastian are going to do?”

“I’ve always seen you as a person. Just a person I couldn’t trust,” she stated simply, not sugar coating her perspective. She was offering an apology, sure, but most of all she was trying to be sincere. “I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that you were so willing to blackmail and manipulate your cousin to get your way. If you could act that way towards Wes, what could I expect for the rest of us?”. Jue said in a level voice. That was the truth. Much of her disdain towards the headmistress’ daughter came because of how she’d acted towards a family member. And with June’s history and shitty family members, she couldn’t help but continue to expect the worst from Bailey. “Look, I’m not going to share my life story and why that behavior seemed so problematic to me. Let’s just say it was a big red flag and I stayed on guard because of it. I know I continuously judged you on a past mistake- because I do believe you probably see it as a mistake now, or at least as a less than ideal way to go about things. I should’ve given you the benefit of the doubt when you did good things for your cousin, for the group. And I’m sorry I didn’t,” she added, being as forthright as she could. Bailey’s next words caused June to frown subtly. “What do you think we’re going to do?” she asked plainly, calmly, very much aware by the other woman’s tone and voice that she was already painting her as a villain. Well, it was only fair wasn’t it? An ironic role reversal.