Page 38 of Control

I looked up and watched Reyna standing over him, exerting her dominance like I’d never seen before. I felt another hand touch my shoulder which caused me to look to my left. Cris was there, looking me over and forcing me to pair with her which I did not resist. I knew why they were there and what they were doing. I looked around more and realize that Reyna and Cris had come on their own. The other trolls in the group that had started to close in on me had suddenly backed up, seemingly afraid to see the three of us together.

“Stay down!” Reyna said to Ronnie. I looked down to his face to see a slight twinge of humiliation taking hold of him as if this were something he’d long feared would happen.

“Reyna!” Cris said while standing by me, her hand still on my shoulder. “We’re leaving! Now! We gotta go!” Reyna looked back and locked eyes with Cris and nodded her head. She then brought herself closer to me and released my hand only to throw her arm around my waist.

“Do it,” Reyna said to Cris, letting her know she was done with Ronnie and ready to leave.

“Shit,” Cris said. “Where to?”

“What?” Reyna said, apparently confused.

“Where am I porting us?” Cris replied.

“Anywhere but here!” Reyna called back.

“Got it!” Cris said as she motioned with her hand to activate her port. In a flash, we were out of The Stormfront and into what looked like an outdoor area that I wasn’t familiar with. I took a moment to get my bearings as both Cris and Reyna looked me over and asked if I was alright. I nodded my head as Reyna embraced me. I wrapped my arms around her without much thought, just happy to be out of that situation. After a long moment, she pulled back from me and set her hands on my shoulders.

“What were you thinking!” Reyna said to me, her eyes full of worry. “Why on Earth would you go into a place like that alone!” I took a moment to gather my thoughts before I answered her. I closed my eyes for a few seconds and then opened them once more to meet Cris’s eyes, her expression just as concerned.

“I had to do something,” I said followed by a deep breath. “I couldn’t just sit back and wait for it all to go down. I thought if I could just get them to talk about it….”

“Wait,” Cris said. “The hack? You mean you think those assholes had something to do with it all?”

“Yes,” I said. “They all came out and said they did something.”

“Or they could have just been trolling,” Reyna said, making a very good point. “It’s what they do. That’s their entire existence in a nutshell. They don’t give a shit about anyone but themselves. All they want is to make everyone’s life as miserable as their own and you know that.”

“I know,” I said, letting myself relax more, thinking I was out of harm’s way. “I just have this feeling that they had something to do with it or they know who did it.”

“Why?” Cris said. “If the data gets decrypted and released, they have just as much to lose as the rest of us.”

“Not if they’re using hacked hardware,” I said. “One of the guys in there, he said something about being able to wipe or replace hardware IDs which would let them use previously suspended headbands. If that’s true then they’ve probably been banned before and were somehow able to create new accounts and use those same bands so they could skip the vetting process.”

“But how?” Reyna asked. “The devs have always been so stringent with who they let in here. How could they bypass everything like that?”

“They shouldn’t be able to,” I said while taking in another deep breath.

“Unless they have someone on the inside,” Cris added. “If they have someone getting them access to new accounts and hardware IDs, then they could do it at will.”

“Or,” I said, looking over to Cris again. “They found a security flaw, an exploit and they just keep using it to make the new accounts and generate new hardware IDs. If you could do that, you could just use that over and over at will. With all the new players the game has been letting in the past year, a couple dozen new IDs could potentially fly under the radar. No one would notice unless they did an intense audit and who knows how often that happens.”

“Or if the auditor is in on it,” Reyna added, realizing the weight of what we were discussing. “Jesus Christ. The more I think about all this, the scarier it gets. If they can make new accounts at will, they can come in over and over and cause all sorts of havoc. And if they crack the encryption to the personal data files, they wouldn’t care because the actions on their current avatars can’t be linked to them in the real world. They probably just filled in all the account information with false names and addresses.”

“Then mark their account as paid for a significant amount of time,” I said, adding on to what Reyna was thinking, “and no one would even really notice until it was too late and they’d caused as much damage as they wanted.”

“Then they’d just start all over again,” Cris said, finishing up what we were all thinking. “You’re right, Reyna. This is a god damn nightmare.” I openly sighed and looked to the clouded sky as did the others. With the extra bit of information I was able to get out of Ronnie and Four Buttons, we’d figured out what their modus operandi was. It was no wonder they never cared about the hack or if their own data was exposed because chances are their current avatars and accounts were all forged with false information. They didn’t care if they got banned because they could just create another account. We knew they had inside access, but to what extent and how was still unknown. My train of thought was suddenly broken when the crash of a shattering beer bottle breaking nearby startled me.

“Jesus Christ!” Cris screamed out as the bottle breaking also startled her and Reyna. The smell of beer filled the air around us and we all looked around to see how it got there. Just then another bottle broke near our feet and startled us once more. I looked around more and noticed a few men staring at us and moving in our direction, all of them with unopened bottles of beer in their hands.

“Oh shit,” I said, scanning the area more. The more I looked, the more I noticed and the number of potential assailants was growing. “We’re being stalked.” Reyna and Cris also took notice and instinctively turned their backs to me, sealing me off from any harm.

“Cris,” Reyna said as more and more of the trolls from the previous room started to spawn in to our location. “We need to move again. We’re in trouble!” They’d made it clear that they wanted to hurt us and were purposely pursuing us.

“I’ll take us to my brothel!” Cris said as I watched her making hand gestures, letting me know she was working her HUD. “Here we go!” Just as two more thrown beer bottles were about to strike near us, Cris activated her port and in a split second, we spawned into her brothel, just inside the front doors. As soon as we got our bearings, Cris began instructing her staff to take action, having them lock the front doors and keeping an eye on the spawn points in case we were followed.

“Cris,” Reyna said as she took my hand and led me further inside. “Is this place secure? Can they get in?” Cris who had started following us stopped momentarily. “Cris?”

“I don’t know,” Cris said with a pause. “I can have my people cover the spawn points, but there’s really no way to stop them unless I close the room.”

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