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Topic Started: Nov 30 2017, 10:34 PM (12 Views)
Wren
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Lace sighed with relief. The Fae-Touched were safe and her agents were relaxing. It was a close call, but everyone was going to be okay.

Including her.

She had been sloppy: tracking, messaging, and most importantly, intercepting 911 calls. In a rush, she hadn’t covered her tracks that well, and the eyes of chains had looked for her. Its fingers combed thru every server she had touched. Lace shuddered at the memory. Those sticky tendrils of rot tore thru bits, leaving fragments and corrupted files in their wake.

But she had to protect them. They were doing this because of her.

With the presence gone, Lace quietly set to healing the damage it had wrought. She stitched together what was broken, revived what had seemed to be lost. Ones and zeroes were woven into existence from memories. Sometimes she couldn’t rely on her own memory of what had been. Thankfully, there were others she could depend on.

The corrupted files took a bit more, tho. Malware would consume and multiply if given the chance. Lace had to quarantine them and shield herself to keep the corruption from spreading as she tried to scrub the files. Sometimes they were too far gone for a simple fix; Lace would have to delete them entirely and create a replacement. The replacements weren't always perfect, but she was getting better.

This time she was fairly proud of her work.

Red! An alert! An urgent tug from a thread! Riley's thread. Messages about taking care of a problem.

With a thought, Lace pulled up location information. Riley was moving toward a set of GPS coordinates that seemed familiar. Lace brought up previous data she had on those coordinates: people moving in and out, times of activity, and ownership records. Only a handful of people came and went. The same ones around the same times. Sometimes others went in but never came out. What packets of data that came out of that place were wrong: slimy and sickening to the touch.

A dark whisper in the web. A name and images came to her, brought by some of her helpers.

Werewolves with their skins flayed; vampires with missing teeth, and humans twisted into unnatural shapes. Lace shuddered at the sight. She had to warn Riley!

She reached out. “Don't go, please,” she begged. “It's too dangerous!”

“I must.”

Then silence. No. The absence of a presence. She could not reach that place.

There was only one thing to do.

With a wave, Lace pulled up the numbers of her agents. “Hurry!” It was up to them to do what she could not. It always had been.

Cold chains wrapped around her. Lace struggled to break free, but they were too strong. They tightened more as she flailed. A wave of nausea hit Lace hard. Out of reflex, she pulled up a shield, a bubble of molten silver light. Black tentacles grabbed at the shield, trying to rip it apart, but they slid off ineffectively. The tentacles retracted after a moment. The chains only dug deeper.

“I̴̹͉͉̟̰̳̰̋͗̓͗̓'̸̦̪̋͐̒͆v̴͚̣͂͂̉e̸͚͔͈͑́̇̆̊ ̵̧̜͍͆̈́f̵̢̢̛̙͖̩̖͉̀̾̋o̸̤̿̓̾̀̓̕ǔ̴̦̞̱̟n̶̫͎̬̗̋̂͊̑̿͊͋͜d̵̟̝͎̓͌͝ ̶̨̪͉̠̈́̋y̸̼̙͖͎̥̗͆̂́͌͝ö̸̻̪̪͇̱̗u̷̫̼͚̲̼͎͋̈́͆̇̚͜͠.” A voice of nails and blood. Its rusty reverberations twisted code, scattered programs. It had no form, but it pushed the world around it out of the way.

And now, it was pulling Lace into darkness.
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