Sing'n in Binary: 27

The attacker doesn't move, but she can see him preloading programs, preparing his assault. 

Aria does the same, moving forward just enough for her heels to be back on solid ground; quietly spinning up core parts of her combat suite. 

She ignores the voice in her head (who sounds a lot like ADMIN) that’s telling her to attack now. That’s screaming to not fall into an even worse position by giving up tempo. 

His attack was nonlethal, intended to restrain, add to that an official looking avatar and she has the sneaking suspicion that this is not just some gangster. 

“Did I do something wr- hey!” She yelps, twitching a finger to break sneaky spiderweb-like threads intended to restrain her. 

The attacker gives a frustrated grunt at her noticing.

“Do you have any idea how much of a headache you’ve been for me!?” He says at a near shout. “My boss thinks I'm inefficient because of your little joyrides!”

Aria blinks, taken aback.

“What? I- I mean- what are you talking about?” She asks, confused. 

Does he mean her netrunning? 

“I mean there are bandwidth caps for a reason! When you just casually 15x overspeed people fucking notice!” He shouts, throwing up his arms.

“Bandwidth caps?” She asks slowly, taken aback. 

She wasn't aware of any sort of bandwidth cap? Though admittedly she didn't really look. 

Sending a quick ping to the network, she scans over the net’s documentation and finds a section on ‘non-commercial transfer speed caps.’

A slowly building wave of anxiety becomes a tsunami as she reads the page. Everything going fuzzy at the edges as the magnitude of her mistake becomes more clear.

She broke the rules!

“O-̱ Oḫ- Oh ̲nǒ! I'm̰ sǒ s̐or̰r̮̄ỵ̣̑!” Aria cries, dismissing the documentation and taking a step closer. “̰I̲ ̆̄ḫa̰d ̲no ̈i͝d͟ęå! You’ve got to ̲b̭̄̄eli̯̎ȩ̒ve̦̒ me!”

Not just a little! A lot! She went so over the line it’s not even funny!

She’s a criminal!

The thought makes everything wobble with emotion, even her avatar starts glitching at this cataclysmic realization.

The officer says nothing as he step's back, throwing up a shield between them while Aria collapses to her knees, buzzing with emotion.

She isn't really paying attention to the outside world as she shuts down her combat suite and, using half remembered scenes from cop shows, raises her hands in surrender. 

There’s a long silence. 

“The fuck?” The officer mutters to himself eventually. 

Aria says nothing, waiting for instructions. After a moment the gossamer fibers wrap around her, not triggering but certainly ready to do so.

“Get up, you look ridiculous.” He says, trying to sound as angry as he was when he first arrived. But he just sounds like he’s trying to lift something heavy.

She complies, eyes downcast.

“Arms down too bitflip.” He sighs, “Three hours of shit and…” He half gestures at her with both hands and huffs. 

There’s a long pause.

“A- Am I in trouble?” She mutters hesitantly.

At her question the officer straightens, eyes lighting up as the conversation gets back on track. He makes a show of looking contemplative, wavering his hand.

"Well, you did break the law…" He muses, then hurries along at Aria flinching. "But for a first offence like this, it's normal to let you off with a 'warning.'" He says with a smile as he raises his hand, rubbing his thumb and forefinger together.

There's a second as she blinks before relief rushes through her. She's so relieved that she's not even that freaked out by his lack of mouth or, for that matter, any of the other bits normally needed to smile.

"Really? Thank you so much!" She starts to move closer to give him a hug, but the trap she's in sends a warning. So she stops with a smile and waits for him to disable it.

There's another awkward pause as the officer continues to rub his fingers together.

“Well that’s what normally happens, but it took so long to find you… I figure I should get something for my trouble.” He pauses weirdly again, mouthless smile dimming. 

She smiles back, waiting for the man to get to his point. At this he huffs.

“I know what you fresh installs think, but Netwatch doesn't just sit with thumbs up our asses, I’ve got better shit to do tod- hey!” 

He cuts himself off as Aria spawns her null blade and slashes through the gossamer threads around her!

Netwatch!

The trap triggers a fraction too late as she dives through the split second gap and spins around to keep the Netwatch agent in her eyeline!

He almost caught her!

“The fuck are you doing?!” He shouts, throwing up the shield between them again as the rest of his combat kit comes online.

She needs to get away! If he captures her they’ll see through her spoofing layer for sure!

Spooling up her combat suite Aria realizes she made a mistake before it’s even loaded, this is a Netwatch agent! If he’s even half as dangerous as ADMIN’s simulations she’s already lost! 

He’s talking, but the data is deemed less important than the problem of not getting caught! 

Analysis.

Attack non-viable. Escape necessary. 

Scanning viable routes…

The agent's combat programs finish loading up from behind his shield, armband flaring with light as a futuristic looking pistol appears in his opposite hand. Aria tries to step back but is reminded of the sheer drop behind her, bracketing her in.

He’s still talking.

Scanning…

His voice is growing even more agitated, combat daemons forming around him as he begins raising his pistol.

She’s out of time!

Scanni-

She leaps.

And the world slows to a crawl. 

There’s a moment of stillness as she drifts in empty space, a fraction of a second where everything sharpens into razor focus. The Netwatch agent’s shocked expression is almost funny as she drifts down towards the abyss.

 In this strange, almost detached state, Aria watches the lip of the fortress rise to eye level as gravity slowly takes hold.

It takes less than a second for her to break visual with the agent, and with it, the moment fades. Aria coming back to herself as she watches the fortress shrink ever faster in her sight as she descends.

She blinks.

Right. Falling.

Wait…

She sees a datastream blur by her as her descent picks up speed!

Oh god she’s falling!

Flipping over, arms outstretched, she sees nothing between her and the darkness at the very bottom of the net. Visions of being annihilated by whatever systems lurk in that dark, like so many other dropped packets almost push out all thought.

Almost.

Because while the rest of her is paralyzed with panic a small part keeps scanning, looking for a way out.

By sheer luck, she spots it, a bot far below transferring from one stream to another like a jumping fish. The outline cuts through its quickly blurring surroundings.

It's barely too far to make a grab.

Mind buzzing as her temps spike, Aria angles her body, twisting to gain the smallest bit of control to her position.

She's got an idea.

The packet zips past, close enough that she can see her reflection in its sleek surface and just too far to grab.

But…
She kicks hard, using the momentum of her fall to push off the bot's surface with every ounce of force she can manage. The motion throws her sideways, becoming unimaginably heavy for a split second as she adjusts her course just enough toward her lifeline. The erratic crackle of a datastream, just within reach.

Just.

She throws out a hand and connects, her fingertips grazing the edge.

It's not enough.

No!

Her arm is almost ripped from her shoulder with the force. Searing pain shoots up and down the entire left side of her body, all to bleed perhaps a fifth of her current speed and slightly adjust her terminal course.

Looking back down, she scans and hopes against hope there's another one-in-a-million shot.

And finds it.

One more datastream on her new path, at the very bottom of the net. 

Below that, the black. 

Last chance.

With a twist, she angles herself towards the glowing lifeline as much as she can, picking up more and more speed. The lightning filling her vision she rotates her feet beneath her at the last possible second, and braces.

And.

Impact. 

She slams into a packet, pushing against the pain and thermal alerts she shoves off, transferring her inertia into the data block and shoving it out of the datastream in her place. The shockwave cracks the packet, leaving it crumbling into glittering fragments as it shoots off, twinkling against the black as it falls into darkness.

Aria takes a deep breath and floats in the datastream, allowing it to carry her for a moment as she tries to summarize her past fifteen seconds.

“Ow.” She understates, wheezing as she realizes how much everything hurts.

That.

Was way too close!

The burning ache, though concentrated on her legs and shoulder runs throughout her entire body. Explaining quite loudly how much it didn't enjoy what she just did.

After a moment she remembers why she nearly zeroed herself and whips her head to where she last saw the agent.

Active scans show no signs of him, she can't decide if that's a good thing.

Pulling herself up to glitching feet, Aria tries to get moving again as she cludges together a temporary patch for her injuries. 

She has no idea how long it'll take the agent to find her, but she has to assume it'll be easier to track her a second time. He said it took three hours to track her after she slowed down, so staying still now is a death sentence!

She needs to move!

–_–

Rendering in through the wrought iron gate of her netport, Aria leans against the sturdy metal as she scans her home for any hints of intrusion.

It took hours to get home.

She'd used every trick she knew to cover her trail, then made up some new ones for good measure. That convoluted route was made even slower by being limited to a light jog, at best.

Most of the time it was more of a pained hobble.

Only after every scan she can think of comes back clean and the apartment cameras don't show a breach squad stacking up on her door, does Aria take a breath; step away from the gateway, and collapse into the soft grass.

She cuts off a tired giggle with a wince at the rough landing, aggravating her already unstable avatar. But the pain doesn't put much of a damper on her high spirits.

She did it!

She did it!

She got away!

It was almost all luck! There was no plan when she jumped off that building! No idea whether she’d land anywhere at all! But she did it anyway and built her exit on the way down! 

That's what you call improvisation baby! 

Aria shivers slightly as the memory begins again in her mind's eye. Of hanging above that abyss and watching fragmenting sparks disappear below.

That shiver triggers a cascade of aches and twinges, the many parts reminding her they’re not working right from the impact.

Immediately pushing her injured body as hard as it could without pausing to triage herself couldn't have helped either. 

Honestly, she’d guess at least three-fourths of this is the result of cascading failures because she couldn't catch small issues early.

So! Step one! Repair time!

Step two?

Aria blinks, carefully not moving as she orders the bots to get working.

She’s not sure what to do next. Obscure her connection more? Move physical locations? She can't really do that right now, not without help.

Will any of it even be enough? She’s pretty sure Netwatch doesn't suspect her true nature, so they’re going to treat her like a human lawbreaker.

What does that look like? She’s not sure but Netwatch doesn't joke around! Look at the stunt she had to pull to get away from one agent!

As the bots disable large swathes of damaged code she has to stop herself from groaning in relief as the pain becomes numbness.

The lack of pain clears her mind significantly, and with pain no longer clouding her mind the solution to all her problems becomes obvious!

Opening up her messenger app, she pauses then closes it out and writes her own simple messenger program. Making it as sneaky as possible and layering it with as much encryption as she can she hard codes a simple message.

If she wasn't immobile Aria would laugh at how silly she’s been.

        ItsME.c: Jinx, it’s Aria. I’m in trouble, not in danger right now but I need your advice. Come to my server ASAP.

Jinx knows everything about the Night City Net. She’ll know what to do.

Sending it off Aria finally allows herself to untense as the worry drops away. Lying back she relaxes while the bots triage the damage, fixing what they can. Pretty soon she'll have to head ‘under the hood’ herself to fix things up manually, but for now, she allows herself a moment to breathe.