Chapter 3

Corren’s Farrcom Proteon sped into the driveway to his home, the automated braking system kicking in just in time to stop the vehicle from colliding with the still closed garage door. Jumping out of the coupe Corren broke into a sprint towards the door of his house, right arm outstretched palm facing the center of the main entrance. Reaching the door his hand slammed into the entry pad with a thud. Corren flinched as pain shot through his hand emanating from the points of contact. Two short beeps from the speaker slits of the console and the two halves of the door quickly retreated into the wall. Corren leapt through the open doorway sliding his left hand over a smaller console just were the left half of the door had disappeared to, before hitting the floor with an even louder thud. Just as quickly as the door had gone it shot back out and closed, almost silently.

A slow throbbing pain made its presence known to Corren. “Ugh, bruised my shoulder when I hit the floor,” he thought as he braced himself against the floor to stand up. Once on his feet again he began to move towards his office. Reaching his desk he placed the hand that was currently not still throbbing and connected to his stinging shoulder, on his desk. A bar of blue light spanning the widest points that his hand occupied on the desk bloomed into existence under his wrist. With an air of smooth or rather sleekness to it, it moved across the desk beneath his hand, just past the tip of his middle finger. With its task seemingly completed it vanished just as it had appeared, and the desk sprang to life. A solid stream rose from the desk showing the image of a phoenix rising from ashes, displayed while this was occurring. Having grabbed the neural transmission headset during this process, he put it on his head and activated it.

MIRG is one of the late 21^st century’s greatest achievements. It works by comparing the electrical impulses the brain generates when processing an image through sight with those given during memory recall. The process requires calibration to be able to comply with each subject’s neural network. The ability to record multiple images at once was added as a later feature and used by police and other law enforcement bodies on people who could, for any number of reasons not focus on a single image or event.

“Initialize image recording,” Corren said trying to recall the emblem on the chest of the man he had left unconscious in the storage room. He also tried to recall the man’s face. Two images began to form in the solid stream, the first began as a simple circle, then a crescent formed inside the circle, a line sprouted from each corner of the crescent growing through its center, but before meeting at the top split into two diagonal lines opposing one another. From the line silver began to bleed filling the crescent, in the triangle made up of the diagonal lines a circuit template began to form. The second image had moved out of the stream and was now a three dimensional projection of a head hovering ominously over the desk. It looked like Loki. “This is the man that tried to kill me,” thought Corren as he removed the headset.

The I³O search was probably one of the greatest innovations of the early 21^st century. I³O means ‘Image Input Image Output’ and basically boils down to this: The original idea was to find images similar to the ones you had found. This quickly was adapted to find images you were looking for which you had seen before by comparing a drawing you created to the images available. For example: If you has seen a logo you particularly liked and wanted to know more about this logo or find more images of it you could draw what you remembered of it and the search would take care of the rest returning images of the logo on the Net. This tool became much more helpful with the invention of MIRG technologies. Mental Image Retrieval and Generation, involves a neural recorder of some kind as well the MIRG software to recreate the images from thoughts or memories. Due to security reasons no MIRG program is allowed to contain direct Net access as a feature and must contain warnings if indirect access is used.

“Save images,” commanded Corren, several images appeared on the desk, he tapped a circular icon with a silver border and a green fill, four black lines crossed at the center as well as one glowing line half their size which was spinning in an anti-clockwise motion. Several glowing dots appeared randomly in the green area that the line had just passed, these then slowly began to fade away as more appeared.

“Image search. Input. Search files. Two most recent.”

“He’s performing an I³O search, what are your orders Thor?” Tyr looked up from his solid stream.

Thor turned as he spoke, “Return a null result and block all outgoing communications.”

“Understood,” affirmed Tyr before beginning to mumble quietly, seemingly to himself. “What the Flux?!”

“What is it Tyr?”

“Someone is trying, and succeeding in accessing the house mainframe from the Net.”

“Stop them!”

“They shouldn’t have been able to get in to begin with. I added an additional layer of security to the ones already in place, but this guy has just passed straight through them, the only reason I actually know someone got past it is that they are streaming petabytes of files into the house.”

Corren jumped as a loud ping sound shot out of the speakers of his desk. Looking at it he realized that the entire desk was now glowing red, as were all the lights in his house. Cautiously walking towards his desk he realized that the screen read.

‘Please Confirm Successful Entry.’

“What in the three cities?” thought Corren, staring at the black letters, which seemed to be growing in size on his now red solid stream. Looking down on his desk there was a second message in somewhat friendlier writing that read.

‘Just say “Entry Confirmed”. Everything will be explained soon enough.’

“Entry Confirmed, said Corren hesitantly, half expecting his house to suddenly shut down or explode. As soon as he had finished pronouncing the ‘D’ the lights in the house returned to their normal settings and the red vanished from the desk and solid stream. The message was quickly replaced with a flood of information; documents, images, videos and holo-projection icons. When the information had seemingly stopped, the word ‘Seraphine’ appeared in large letters at the top of his stream, below this five similar emblems materialized. The one at the center looked almost identical to the one which he had drawn and searched for. A search which seemed to have reaped a rather fruitful result, although it had come in a rather unexpected manner. The center emblem flashed and then grew filling the stream, the message ‘You saw a man with this emblem of his chest, Yes?’ Slightly less hesitant this time Corren answered the message, “Yes.”

‘Come to Sorren.’

Sorren is one of the three oceanic cities. The city is well known for housing the world’s economic data and is home to many of the world’s banks and financial institutions. The university is not only famous for its business school but also for its dedication to history and the storage thereof. It was the first of the three to be built and the smallest of the three. It is located in the Pacific Ocean.

“How am I supposed to do that?” asked Corren feeling much less hesitant but slightly annoyed at the proposition of having to cross an ocean as well as a continent in his current state.

‘Please place your Identification on your desk along with your wallet.’

Corren took his wallet out of his pocket, removed his ID and placed it on the desk. A sky blue circle formed around it, more data suddenly appeared on the desk and zipped towards it disappearing as it collided with the ring. Curious to see if something similar would happen on placing the wallet on the desk Corren did so. A new message appeared on the stream.

‘You will take the Hydris.’

The Hydris is one of the largest ground effect aircrafts currently in operation, which regularly travels between Atlantis and Sorren via the Arctic Circle. It is not the fastest way of traveling between the two cities, it is however one of the more scenic ones.

‘Please place your communicator on your desk.’

Corren resigning his hesitation placed his HermesTech Nox communicator on the desk and watched as data streamed into the device. “What are you doing?” he asked whoever was on the other end of the communication.

‘Your communicator is being linked to a secure communications satellite I have acquired. All future communications with this device are now untraceable to anyone without access to this satellite. I am also increasing the security of the device itself. I will explain any further details once you arrive.’

‘Please prepare anything you would like to take with you as you will not be returning to your residence anytime soon.’

“Any luck with cutting the communication to the house?” Thor asked watching the solid streams in front of him.

“I can’t seem to be able to do anything to this connection. I’ve tried intercepting it, which should be the easiest even if I wouldn’t be able to know what it says now do to the encryption we could eventually find out. I can’t even do that though, let alone stop it, or trace it. It seems to be coming from everywhere simultaneously, even my own station, which isn’t possible. What this person is doing is not possible and yet it is the only explanation for why I cannot do anything to this connection.” Tyr explained frustrated by this feeling of helplessness slowly creeping through him. He was supposed to be one of the best the Seraphine had to offer when it came to the Net and yet he could no longer access a single terminal in the house of his target.

“While this turn of events does not make me feel comfortable, it should not have too large a bearing on what needs to be done. The target will either try to barricade himself within his house or try to escape. If the former is the case then we breach and capture. I assume you are monitoring all Police and Security communications for any mention of the Target.”

“First thing I set up.”

“Good, then if the latter is true he should be gathering whatever he doesn’t want to leave behind and should try escaping soon. At that point we can capture him. Prepare the EMP to disable any vehicles he may try to use in his escape.”

“Understood.”

Corren approached his desk, the travel case at his side. “I’m ready,” he affirmed.

‘Good, the preparations are almost complete however there is one more thing I will need you to do before you leave your home.’

Chapter 2

Corren realized what was happening on the other side of the door and ducked to the side to avoid being seen, but the damage was done. He heard nothing, “That’s odd,” he thought to himself, “This room isn’t sound-proofed.”

*Click*

“That’s the lock, so it did see me. Best idea? Run!” Corren began to sprint down the corridor. He had almost reached the end when the door had fully opened. He looked back as to see who it was that might soon end his life and to try to see his colleagues who he had assumed were all dead. He had assumed correctly, however he did not manage to confirm his fears. A midsized muscular looking man stood in the doorway, looking straight at Corren as he turned the corner still in full sprint.

“Loki! Go after him, but don’t kill him. Odin wants him alive, says he could be useful.” Loki turned towards the man giving him orders.

“Don’t worry Thor. I’ll look after the little guy.” Loki began his pursuit of Corren.

“Self-defense! That’s what I need, something to defend myself. There are some prototype weapons in storage, could use one of those. Okay. What’s next? Oh! Got to get the data back from Aims. What else? Erase all traces of the program. Wait why do they want it anyway? No never mind that, not important at this point in time. Damn, there is a copy still in the chair. Think Corren, think! Remote accessing! I was pissed Rowen put it in but it’s going to be helpful now. Good I’m here.” Corren, now standing outside the storage swiped his hand across the scanner. The door opened and he leapt inside, swiping his hand across the scanner inside the room before he was even fully inside. The door started to close as soon as his body had crossed the threshold. Corren attempted to catch his breath quickly before giving up and beginning to scan the storage room for a suitable weapon to use against his assailant. “Deto!” Corren exclaimed picking up the Pulse Gun prototype and the fully developed Shock Gloves. While both were never intended to be handled at the same time it would have to work.

Deto: An exclamation of success. Its origin lies in the Japanese word for congratulations written as omedeto in Romanji.

The Pulse Gun was a master’s project that attempted to create a hand held directed EMP that would allow you to target specific electronic devices while leaving others unharmed. It was not successful in elementary testing as it simply disabled all electronic devices in the path of the pulse, even penetrating basic shielding and was thereafter discontinued.

The concept of Shock Gloves is similar to that of the 21^st century stun gun. Instead of only two points of contact the shock gloves provide several points and adjust the output to the life form or object they are touching as not to cause any permanent or lethal damage.

Corren’s chain of thought was suddenly interrupted by the sound of the door opening. He quickly positioned himself facing the door with a clear line of fire. Loki stood triumphantly in the doorway. Corren fired the Pulse Gun; the room smelt as the air after a lighting storm. “Well that didn’t work too well now did it?” mused Loki with a smug grin on his face.

“Did he realize all his electronic devices just failed? Or is he just completely oblivious?” Corren asked himself. He probably should have realized that while facing an opponent such as Loki, one should concentrate on his movement or it would be over before one realizes it. As soon as the pulse had passed through Loki, he had begun to move quickly towards his target and before Corren could figure out what Loki was doing, he was already in Loki’s headlock.

Loki figured if Odin wanted the target alive, unconscious would have to do, as he wasn’t about to leave his target conscious. No, definitely not. Conscious targets only cause trouble. They kick, they scream and sometimes they even bite. Loki particularly didn’t like the biting, that was one experience he need not have again.

While Loki was in this state of deep thought, he did not realize that Corren had positioned his left arm so that his hand was touching the back of Loki’s head. Loki noticed the touch as soon as it occurred but did not think much of it as the most it could achieve was removing his bandana, and although he did not like this idea, it did not bother him to the extent of wanting to do something about it.

This was Loki’s mistake. In Loki’s defense, he had never been up against a weapon of this type before this moment. Corren activated the left glove. Current surged from the glove through Loki’s head, his body suddenly collapsing as a result of losing consciousness. As Loki’s body began to slump Corren freeing himself from the headlock slipped out from under it and let Loki’s almost lifeless body drop to the floor. “I wonder why these things never went into production. They work like well enough,” pondered Corren before snapping back to the reality where he had almost just been killed.

“Who is this guy anyway? Why was he trying to kill me? What is that emblem on his chest?” The realization that he was getting distracted by unimportant things hit him like a Teslabahn. “What was the next part of the plan? Programming Center! I have to get the data before getting out of here.”

Making his way to the Programming Center involved many moments pinned to walls as the doors to a multiple of rooms kept opening and closing. Each time one would open Corren would jump at the nearest wall and seemingly tried to meld with it. This earned him many strange and concerned looks from the students and professors that emerged from the doors. Most of the female students would giggle amongst themselves when he did this, looking back only to turn away again to giggle some more. This would normally have annoyed Corren as he didn’t like not being in on the joke, but today he was far more concerned with staying alive.

Reaching the Programming Center he entered as he had the storage room, with the exception that shortly after entering the Center he broke into another sprint for the booth at the back of the class. Not even noticing what could possibly be the dirtiest look ever given on the Atlantis University Campus.

Corren burst through the doors of the booth and continued to where Aims was sat. Aims had, as soon as the bursting occurred jumped in his seat and then swiveled towards the origin of the noise. He was extraordinarily surprised to find that it was Corren who had almost knocked the doors off their connection to the wall. He stood up just as Corren reached him.

“Aims! I need that data on the disc I gave you, now! Then I need you to...”

“Hold on a nano-second, and catch your breath,” Aims interrupted.

Corren took a deep breath and continued, “...to delete any traces of what I gave you from the University System. Not a shred of it can survive. Do you understand?”

“I understand, but could you explain why?”

“No time, and the less you know the better. Probably,” Corren added, not sure if this was true but it was what he had always seen said in movies when they were short on time and it seemed to work there.

Aims sat back down turned to his solid stream and began entering commands. On a slightly less eventful day Corren would have been impressed with the speed at which Aims handled the task he had been given, but this was not an ordinary day, and for Corren even Aims’ fastest was not fast enough. “Here, that’s everything you gave me including some corrections I made. There were a few...”

“No time,” interrupted Corren. “Thank you, for everything,” he concluded before turning to dash back towards the exit.

“Loki! Respond!” shouted Thor. He reached into one of the many pockets in his jacket and took out a small box, only a few millimeters thick. He placed the box on the table in front of him, removed his right glove and placed his finger, squarely in the center of the top plate of the box. The area under his finger briefly glowed before removing his finger. The top plate commenced to glow and the light began to rise, shapes of light emerged out of the glow.

Four red dots appeared in roughly the same area. Thor looked at this with displeasure, “Tyr, Loki is not appearing on the map.”

Tyr looked up from behind the chair, “The stream is accurate, either he is in a shielded area or his comms have been disabled. The latter is more probable, very few rooms in this section have shielding.”

“Bragi, go find Loki and bring him back here. Freya, you help Tyr with the chair.”

Bragi made his way to the door, placing his hand in front of the scanner it opened. Stepping through the door his shoulders almost touched the frame. As the door closed Freya turned to Thor and asked, “Why did you send him? He is the most conspicuous out of all of us. I could have gone.”

“I doubt Loki would come back unharmed if I sent you. Also, Loki will most likely need to be carried, Bragi will have no problems complying with either.”

“Bragi, it seems the last sign of Loki came from within some sort of storage facility,” relayed Thor “It is located down the corridor and on the right of your location.”

“Understood,” confirmed Bragi and changed course towards the storage room.

Placing his hand in front of the scanner the door slid open for Bragi. Upon entering the room he immediately saw Loki’s unconscious body lying in a heap on the floor. “It seems our comrade has been incapacitated. The target is not here. I assume he has fled,” announces Bragi.

“The target is not a problem; he is most likely headed to his residence. We will stop by later and retrieve him when we are done here. Tyr, monitor any activity coming from his home, don’t let him contact anyone.” Hearing no response Bragi figures that Tyr agreed and just didn’t use his comm. There really was no point in using it when he and Thor were in the same room. Bragi leant over and grabbed the back of Loki’s jacket tightly lifted him up and threw him over his shoulder as though he were handling a large sack of potatoes. Slowly, Bragi moved to the door.