Incursion

When I saw the fantastic contest by @originalworks, I really felt inspired to enter. The contest post can be found at this link. My entry is below.

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Incursion complete...

He was in, cliched as it sounded. The system architecture a fractalized cityscape before him. He flinched under the bombardment of data packets. The mind was not built to process such an influx. He accessed more resources for his VIR and applied a real-world overlay to the hacked system he now inhabited.

Everything dissolved then rematerialised. He was on a busy street. People bustling past oblivious to his presence. He was in a full virtuality, physical self elsewhere plugged into his Semi-AI machine, Val-A. Huge buildings reared into the sky around him. Despite the city overlay, twisted geometries visibly pulsed beneath their smooth mirrored exteriors.

He hurried on through the data packets, now manifesting as pedestrians sharing the sidewalk with him. He followed a luminous blue line on the sidewalk only he could see. It would lead him to the MARS protocol. He was being paid a lot of money to commit an impossible theft. He didn't care how impossible it was; only the challenge of hacking and theft meant anything. He was the best hacker in the world. No-one could match him. He could...

Ow. What the hell?

Someone had bumped into him, for a second their outline flared before him before fading into nothing again. Shit, another hacker? No-one else would be able to see let alone physically affect him. He flung up a shield countermeasure. It flared red as it was instantly and repeatedly struck. Fuck, it was fading fast. Another shield. He unleashed a worm, Its virtualised form corkscrewed forward, splitting into ten then ten more, fanning out in a neon cocktail before him.

He grunted. His opponent had spewed forth their own worms and macro viruses. One of which had found a backdoor in his audio/visual interface. The street before him blurred, frantically he re-wrote code, slamming firewalls and virtual gates in place of the rapidly replicating routine.

Blackness.

Text revealing itself against an inky backdrop letter by letter...

P
0
w
n
e
d

He reached forward, retching as an emergency sub-routine slammed firewalls into place. Physical breakers violently isolating his system from the net. Slowly he surfaced into the real and removed the leech-like ADACT plug from his temple. Metallic connections glittered sharply in the blinking lights of his VIR setup.

'Val-A, status?'

Firewalls intact. Countermeasures deployed. No intrusion detected.

His head pounded at the sudden disconnect from the VIR actualisation. At least Val-A confirmed he hadn't been trailed back. What were the chances of two hackers hitting the same target at the same time? His gaze was caught by one of the screens before him blinking.

Sorry... Liza.

Liza, who on earth was Liza?