Cyber Squad - Level 3 Read online

  “Where is everybody?” Kai asked to change the subject. Marco was like a bloodhound. Once he was on a trail, he would never let it go.

  “They’ll be here soon,” Francois said. “All of them.”

  Marco handed each of his friends a can, then opened his. Kai could smell what the beverage was, even before he glanced at the cold can in his hand: beer.

  “Seriously?” he said. “It’s only 10 AM, dude.”

  Marco shrugged. “So? We’re on vacation. The doctors have banned us from VR but not from beer.”

  “That’s right,” Francois agreed, and he and Marco clinked their cans.

  “Now,” Marco glanced at Kai, wiggling his eyebrows. “Spill the beans.”

  Kai sighed, opening his beer and taking a sip to buy himself a moment to think. For the millionth time, he asked himself what he had been thinking.

  Nothing, absolutely nothing. It had just felt like the right thing to do at that moment. He hadn’t thought, he had just acted, and it had felt damn good.

  Ever since, however, Marco hadn’t stopped digging. No matter how often Kai avoided the question or tried to invent excuses, it wouldn’t take Marco longer than a day to start all over again.

  “That again?” he asked, irritated.

  “Mais oui,” Francois said. “We want to know everything. Every dirty little secret there might be.”

  “Exactly,” Marco agreed, and both of them stared at Kai with expectation in their eyes. “We won’t tell anyone, pinky promise.”

  “There’s nothing to tell!” Kai said, throwing his arms up and spilling some of his beer over his t-shirt. “I simply wanted to show my gratitude.”

  “Right,” Marco said, pulling his lower eyelid down with his finger. “That’s why you ran up to her and kissed her.”

  “Yes!” Kai said, a little bit too sharply.

  For some reason, he didn’t want to share what had happened between him and Alice with his friends.

  Because nothing had happened!

  Well, that wasn’t quite true. He had kissed her twice, once in VR and once IRL, and both times had been amazing. However, that didn’t mean that there was actually anything between them. She’d said no, and besides, she happened to have a boyfriend. And not only was he horrible to her, of that Kai was convinced by now, but he had also threatened to kill him…

  “There’s absolutely nothing more to say about it. I got carried away because I was relieved, so I kissed her. End of story.”

  “That was pretty badass, man,” Marco said with an acknowledging smile. “I wouldn’t have had the courage to do that.”

  “Badass but not very smart, if you ask me,” Francois said dryly. “Considering who her boyfriend is.”

  No kidding.

  “Ah, here comes our girl,” Marco said, pointing to the side with his chin.

  Kai and Francois followed his line of sight and saw Claudia, who was approaching the pool area from between two buildings. She was dressed in a plain, black bathing suit, sandals, a huge straw hat, and sunglasses. She looked really cute, Kai thought, but her facial expression was stern and lacked her usual mischievous, easy-going attitude. She, too, had changed since the incident. Although she had been lucky and had stayed physically unharmed, the existential stress must have gotten to her. Kai could see that his friend was suffering and wished there was something he could do about it, but he didn’t know what. His only hope was that she would eventually feel better.

  The one who had been affected worst by the disaster was Josh. While all the others had been checked over thoroughly by Helltek’s resident doctors and then sent home – and on leave – Josh had remained in the infirmary for three days. Kai had visited him every day, yet Josh had hardly spoken, which might have been related to the tranquilizers he had been given. But even after being sent home, Josh refused to join the others and instead stayed alone in his apartment. Kai worried about him, and he wasn’t the only one. Marco was convinced that Josh wouldn’t come back once their squad was cleared for testing again. Kai hoped Marco was wrong. He liked Josh and felt horrible about what had happened to him.

  “Hey guys,” Claudia said, sitting down on a chair under an umbrella. The others knew that she preferred the shade and had therefore left the chair with the umbrella for her.

  “Good morning, sunshine,” Marco said. “How are you today?”

  She grimaced. “Meh. I don’t know about you guys, but I can’t wait to get back to testing again. This hanging out and doing nothing is slowly getting to me.”

  “But we’re such lovely company!” Marco objected.

  Claudia made a gesture with her head that unmistakably revealed that she was rolling her eyes, even though they were hidden behind her sunglasses. Then she wrinkled her nose.

  “Is that beer I’m smelling?”

  “Yep,” Marco said. “Want one?”

  Claudia extended her hand with a sigh. “Why not.”

  “Now look at that!” Francois said, making them all glance toward him. “I didn’t believe he’d actually show up.”

  Turning his head, Kai saw who Francois was referring to.

  Viktor was approaching from the other side of the residential compound. Dressed in black linen pants, a form-fitting shirt and Ray-Ban sunglasses, he radiated self-confidence and a sense of style which was rather atypical among the otherwise nerdy testers.

  Again, Kai wondered at what a strange guy Viktor was. Not only was he the only person Kai knew who looked better IRL than in VR, but in the secretive meeting he and Viktor had had in the middle of the night a few days before the attack, he’d revealed that he was actually a hacker. A White Hat, as ethical hackers were called – the good guys who used their talents to protect others instead of causing mayhem.

  During the incident, not only had Kai gotten a glimpse of Viktor’s abilities, which were much more advanced than he pretended, but he had also realized that everything Viktor did was nothing but an act, a charade. His aloof, slightly bored, arrogant attitude was nothing but a disguise to hide who he really was.

  And who he really was was a total mystery to Kai. No matter how often he’d thought about it over the last couple of days, he hadn’t been able to come up with anything plausible. The guy was an enigma.

  No one is what they seem at Helltek.

  Those had been Viktor’s words, and Kai realized more and more how true they were. At the beginning, when he’d started his new job – and that seemed a lifetime ago already! – he had believed he’d been hired to test games. Although QA had come a long way since games, and huge parts of people’s daily lives, had moved into VR, it was still quality assurance. Testing games, testing software. At least, that was what Kai had believed when setting foot on the Helltek premises for the first time.

  But the more time he spent here, the more he learned that, in fact, nothing and no one were what they seemed to be. The only people he knew he could trust unconditionally were Marco, Francois, Claudia, Lex, Topher – and Alice.

  Admittedly, Alice was an enigma herself. She wasn’t like anyone Kai had ever met, and she had even mentioned that she was nothing like what he believed her to be. And yet Kai knew in the depths of his heart that she was good.

  That’s because you’re in love with her, you idiot.

  “Hey Viktor,” Marco said, welcoming their team’s tech, and Kai twitched. He hadn’t even realized that he’d been drifting off in his own thoughts again.

  “Guys,” Viktor greeted them in his typically minimalistic way before he took a seat next to Kai, his expression clearly showing that he would rather be anywhere else than here.

  It’s an act, Kai thought again.

  Now that he was aware of it, it seemed so obvious that he wondered why no one had ever noticed it before. But after contemplating it thoroughly, he’d decided not to tell anyone about what he had seen Viktor do when they were trapped in the game. Viktor had saved not only Kai’s but most likely everyone else’s ass. If he didn’t want any recognition for it, then he probably had very good reasons for that.

  Besides, Kai already had enough trouble and enemies in the virtual and real worlds alike. He didn’t want to get onto Viktor’s bad side. Whoever the guy really was, it surely wouldn’t be smart to piss him off. And he had made it clear to Kai that he should keep his mouth shut – for his own sake. Whatever that was supposed to mean.

  “And here come today’s star guests,” Marco announced like a TV show host.

  Kai looked over to the other side of the pool to see Topher and Lex coming toward them, hand in hand. Both wore swimming attire. While Topher’s looked rather ordinary and boring, Lex’s look was as screaming as always. She wore a tiny bikini with AC printed on the part covering her right breast and DC on the left. Her wild hair was pinned up into something that looked more like a chaotic beehive than actual hair, and neon-blue sunglasses covered her eyes.

  As was typical for a natural redhead, her skin was pale, and Kai considered that, beyond her quirkiness, she was actually a pretty attractive woman. He also saw for the first time that her body was covered in tattoos, which were always hidden under her clothes and lab coat when he saw her at work. There must have been at least twenty, if not more.

  “Look at them,” Claudia said. “Aren’t they cute?”

  “I must say, I had no idea Lex could look so hot,” Marco said.

  “Ugh,” Claudia said, rolling her eyes again. “You’re hopeless.”

  Lex and Topher had changed since the incident too. Beforehand, their relationship had been rather casual, and she hadn’t really been interested in any commitment. Now, however, they didn’t make it a secret that they were a couple, and according to Marco, who as always was well-informed about such things, they hadn’t left Topher’s apartment since the team had
been put on leave. For Kai, it was interesting to see that it had taken Topher to almost get killed for Lex to realize how she really felt about him.

  “Hey gang,” Topher greeted them. “What’s up?”

  “Oh, not much,” Marco said. “Just some shiny happy people enjoying the morning sun.”

  “And some beer,” Francois added.

  “And some beer,” Marco confirmed.

  “Glad you made it,” Kai said.

  “Of course,” Lex replied, sitting down across from Kai. “Nothing better than a little conspirative gathering in the morning.”

  It was only now that she was close to him that Kai noticed the strange round forms under the fabric of her bikini, and after a second of contemplation, he realized that they were nipple piercings. He felt himself begin to blush and he quickly studied his feet, hoping Lex hadn’t noticed. Because if she had, she would make fun of him forever…

  “Ok,” Claudia said. “Josh isn’t coming, so we may as well get started.”

  “But first, everyone should send the little spy in their head to sleep,” Marco said with a seriousness in his voice that was unusual for him.

  Topher and Lex exchanged a glance, then he nodded and said, “Siren, go into sleep mode.”

  “Siren, go into sleep mode,” Kai repeated, and so did everyone else.

  Finally, it was Marco’s turn.

  “Babe, go into sleep mode.”

  “Oh Lord,” Lex commented dryly. “And I thought I’d heard and seen everything.”

  “I know, right?” Claudia said.

  “So what?” Marco said with a grin. “Not my fault that I’m the only creative one here.”

  “How about we proceed to the reason we all came here?” Viktor interrupted. “Why waste time?”

  “Yeah, because we’ve all been so busy lately…” Marco said.

  “Thank you all for coming,” Kai intervened before Marco and Viktor could go for each other’s throats. “We asked everyone to meet up here because we wanted to talk about what happened last week. And we don’t want anyone to eavesdrop on us.”

  Lex raised an eyebrow but said nothing.

  Out of the corner of one eye, Kai could see Viktor smirking. Was it because he knew that sending Siren to sleep wasn’t enough to achieve real privacy? Why else would he have used the mysterious box when he and Kai had met the other night? But Kai didn’t have time to think about that now.

  “I assume that’s why Lex and I are here,” Topher said. “You guys hang out all the time. What would you like to hear from us?”

  “Well, for starters,” Marco said, “why don’t you tell us what the fuck happened to us in there? No one is telling us anything! They put us on leave instead. Are our jobs in danger?”

  Topher slowly shook his head. “No, your jobs are certainly not in danger, that much I know for sure. The leave is just a precaution to be sure that everyone is okay before we go back to work. Our team is still assigned to start testing Steampunk 2020 the day after tomorrow.”

  Everyone was visibly relieved. Francois puffed out the breath he’d been holding in, and even Claudia’s face took on a more relaxed expression. Kai couldn’t help himself, but he, too, felt relief. Losing his job would be the worst thing he could imagine – well, after dying, of course. Losing his job would also mean losing his apartment and the new lifestyle he’d come to appreciate so much. It would mean returning to the gray tenement wasteland and hopelessness.

  And, worst of all, it would mean losing Alice.

  However, he still remembered what Lex had told him the other day: that he was the “golden hen” and that Gregor Hell personally held a protective hand over him.

  Friends in high places.

  “That’s good to hear,” Marco said. “Now, what the fuck happened to us in there? How was any of that even possible?”

  Topher shrugged. “We don’t know.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Guys,” Topher lifted his hands with a sigh. “I know you’re frustrated and you want answers. But there’s not much I can tell you that you don’t already know. Fact is, Helltek takes what happened very seriously. Gregor Hell has delayed a business trip to Orbis HQ in Germany because of the situation here. I assure you that the company is trying everything to figure out what happened and how to make sure it never happens again.”

  Marco clapped his hands. “Bravo! Did management brief you to give us this answer?”

  “Shut it, Marco!” Claudia intervened. “Stop being such a dick! It’s not Topher’s fault. Don’t forget he was in there with us when it happened.”

  “I really wish I could tell you more,” Topher continued, “but—”

  “Helltek was attacked from the inside,” Lex said calmly yet in, for her, an unusually authoritative way. “Which means we have a mole inside these walls. A spy. A saboteur.”

  “How is that possible?” Kai asked.

  “We don’t know,” Topher said.

  “What do you guys know?” Marco snapped, but then he caught a death stare from Claudia that made him shut up instantly.

  “So, it’s out of the question that it was a simple malfunction? A severe glitch in the code?” Francois asked.

  Lex nodded. “I’m afraid so. I’ll spare you guys the tech gibberish and make it simple. Helltek’s firewall is custom-built and state-of-the-art. I don’t know for sure, but rumors are that the development costs were over twenty million euros. It’s impenetrable. No unauthorized data can get inside these walls, or outside. What we experienced that day, and what almost killed all of you…”

  She took a deep breath before continuing, as if she wanted to prevent her voice from shaking.

  “What we experienced that day was a deliberate attack by a highly sophisticated construct. It wasn’t like anything I’ve ever seen before, in its viciousness and its brilliance alike. It was designed to deliberately fragment a virtual environment and everything inside it – including players. Additionally, it blocked the log-out process. A program of such complexity couldn’t possibly have passed the firewall. Someone brought it inside Helltek on a physical device, connected it to the internal network, and sent it on its way. Once inside, the malware remained dormant until something triggered it. It must have been some sort of embedded command issued by someone monitoring the whole incident.”

  The air around them suddenly seemed to have turned chillier, as if thick clouds had blocked out the sun on a warm day. Everyone remained silent for a while, and the team looked from one to another.

  Goosebumps ran down Kai’s arms. This was not good. Not good at all.

  “But… why?” he finally said, asking what everyone was thinking.

  Lex popped a piece of bubble gum in her mouth.

  “I wish I knew, kiddo. All of this is very strange, and I don’t like it at all. We have someone on the compound with remarkable hacking skills and a cunning personality. Someone—”

  Topher shot her a glance and she fell silent, as if biting her tongue.

  “So the company has no idea who this person might be?” Francois asked.

  Lex shrugged. “No fucking clue. The saboteur covered their tracks masterfully. As far as we know, it could be anyone. Even someone from this very team.”

  “Does that mean this saboteur might strike again?” Kai asked. “Were we chosen deliberately, or was it a coincidence?”

  “I’m sorry,” Lex said. “But we don’t know. All I could tell you would be speculation…”

  “Then tell us the speculation, Lex,” Claudia begged.

  Kai noticed how Topher gently squeezed Lex’s hand as the two of them communicated in a silent way. Not for the first time since they had arrived.

  “I don’t think that would be helpful,” Lex said. “But I assure you that I’ll do everything in my power to keep you guys safe when you go back in VR.”

  “Yeah, we saw that back when we got our asses grilled in BBE3!” Marco said.

  “That’s enough, Marco!” Topher said with unusual sharpness. “I know what happened to us was absolutely terrifying. I was there myself, remember? But trying to find someone to blame won’t help anyone, so I won’t hear any more of it, understood?”

  Everyone nodded.

  “And yes, you will be compensated,” Topher continued. “All of us will. I don’t know how much, but I got an email from management saying that they’re convinced everyone will be satisfied. Besides, there will be a big party tomorrow night after the assembly. So, I suggest we all chill and wait to see what Gregor has to say. As far as I know, both he and Marie-Louise will be attending, so they must have important news to share.”