Phoenix Phire

"Shit... What the hell did Nix put in this thing?" Dex found his trunk on the stairs outside of his dorm. Since his room was on the second floor, that meant he had to drag it up the long staircase. Near the top, he was forced to use the rail to assist his progress. "At least put wheels on his bastard!"

At the top of the wood staircase, there were three options. A sharp left would bring you to another set of stairs, while left or right would bring you down opposite hallways where the dorm rooms were.

Clued-in by the numbered signs, Dex found his room a few minutes later. After double-checking that the plaque on the door said 212B, he pushed it open and walked inside.

The room was quite large, with comfortable-looking beds on either side of the room. Each of the beds had a wardrobe that had been built into the wall nearest to it.

"You must be Dextron?" A young man peaked out of the far wardrobe where he'd been busy unpacking his trunk. He was tall and thin with long brown hair that gave him a scholarly appearance. "I'm Marik; it's nice to meet you!"

"Call me Dex. Nice to meet you, Marik." Dex shook the hand that the other extended, immediately noticing that the badge on Marik's jacket had a blue border. "You're a 2nd year?"

Marik nodded. "The second-year dorms burned down last year; construction has been delayed for some reason."

The door leading to the shared bathroom banged open an instant later as two young women forced their way in, both of them were smiling at Marik.

"You're taking too long, Mar!" A petite girl with curly orange hair stepped into the room, her eyes darting over everything. "Who's your friend?"

Marik sighed unhappily; after living with the sisters for nearly a year, he had hoped that with a new room assignment, he could finally shake them loose. "Dex, this is Lulu and Tifa Dread."

Lulu waved at Dex before rushing over to peek inside Maric's wardrobe. Tifa smiled cheerfully; she looked like some sort of old-school wandering martial artist. Her head was shaved completely bald except for a long topknot braid.

"What kind of fighting do you favor?" Tifa had stopped near Dex's trunk as he attempted to size him up.

"Ranged fighting." Dex shook the offered hand, noting that it was calloused and strong. "Swordfighter?"

Tifa nodded. "Good guess, Lulu and I are both 3rd years, so if you have any questions, just ask. In case you haven't realized, we're your quadmates."

Dex leaned back against his trunk, trying not to laugh at Lulu and Marik. She seemed determined to climb into his wardrobe while he was attempting to pull her out. "How do you know, Marik?"

"We lived with him last year when our dorm burned down. He's my boyfriend." Lulu's voice came from inside the wardrobe; despite Maric's best effort, he'd been unable to stop her.

"No, I'm not." Marik's expression turned sour as he glanced at Dex with a hopeless expression. It was obvious he couldn't deal with her.

"Just lock her in," Dex offered.

Marik's eyes widened slightly; an instant later, he slammed the wardrobe door closed and locked it. The smile on his face was like someone who had just won the lottery.

"Huh? Hey! Open this door, Mar." A loud pounding erupted from inside of the wardrobe.

It was Tifa who started laughing first; then it spread to Marik and Dex.

[Your set timer has expired. Your current progress will be saved. Logging Off.]

Dex was still laughing when he opened up the stasis pod a few moments later. "When I ride the wave later, I'll do a bit of background on Inferno and Tembai Academy. It should make gameplay a little easier."

A few minutes later, Dex pushed his motorcycle out of the barn and started it up. The bike was purposefully parked on the loose floorboard where he kept his contraband stored. His place had been searched countless times over the last three years; not a single person had ever attempted to move the bike. Instead, they searched around it and even peeked into the gas tank and exhaust. "Human nature ignores the obvious while trying desperately to be clever."

His grandpa was the original owner of the bike. Dex kept the old model Kawasaki because it was the only one he could find that didn't have a virtual interface. But, of course, it was no longer a combustion engine; it had been retrofitted to run on modern battery power.

Dex turned down Main street, ignoring the stares that riding the ancient bike usually caused. Antiques used to be the cool thing, but nowadays everyone wanted next year's model. The lingering smell of smoke caused him to scan his surroundings. Burn permits within city limits were a thing of the past. Even small towns like Massena had turned completely 'Green.'

He followed the haze that hung in the air until his ankle tracker started to chirp loudly. Unhappily, he turned around and reversed course until it stopped. A sudden feeling of dread caused him to take a left down a nearby alley where he rode two more blocks before stopping.

"Mother fucker..." In the distance, Dex could see the smoldering pile of rubble that had once been Saul's Pawnshop. He casually took out the map his P.O. had given him and pretended to look at it.

Odd that Saul's place had burned down. The place had been a junkpile, but Dex knew it to be part of the updated City-Grid electric system. There were no gas or propane lines. "Guess I'll cut this trip short."

Back in his barn, Dex removed his contra and then rolled the bike onto the loose floorboard. Within five minutes, he was back in the pod and riding the wave.

"Fuck," Dex swore angrily while reading the news. "Local businessman dies in fire."

Five years earlier, Saul had given Dex one of his first freelance jobs. Updating the security software in his business. It was the reason why Dex knew so much about the building.

It took less than a minute to access the backdoor that younger Dex left in the pawnshop's security system. "I didn't put that in there..." As soon as he stepped in, a countermeasure noticed his presence. "Someone left some top-end ICE." (Intrusion Countermeasure Electronics)

He activated the security kernel that he'd left hidden in the system, smiling when his code gobbled up the ICE. "They'll know someone visited, but they won't know who. Best I can do since I wasn't prepared." After erasing his backdoor, he eased out of the system and closed down his ride.

Leaning back in the recliner he opened the pod up while contemplating. "The video and audio in Saul's shot were scrubbed. Clean job too, no chance of a rebuild. Saul's transaction data had been downloaded."

Dex glanced at the stasis chamber a few feet away. By agreement, the purchase was made off-books. "There should be no credit or transaction trail" He closed his eyes for a moment.

Several minutes went by without any noise or movement. When Dex's eyes blinked open a while later, his expression was uncertain. "I'm 30 percent fucked..."

He stood up suddenly and headed into the kitchen. He could report his findings, but since he was an adult in violation of parole, this would probably result in incarceration. "As long as I can stay below 40 percent, things should be okay."

It was an old adage among hackers. Leaving a trail behind you was unavoidable in many instances. Law enforcement wouldn't bother you until they were sure they could make a case. According to hacker lore, once they were forty percent sure, you were fucked. "Of course, in the private sector, you could be fucked at thirty or even twenty... How would I find me?"

Dex talked to his food while he made a sandwich. "Saul could have been into some shady things, there's a likelihood that this has nothing to do with our transaction." His eyes glanced over his shoulder at the stasis pod while he slapped mayonnaise onto two slices of bread. "SHIT! It's totally the pod!"

"How to find me... With Saul's transaction data, they should have a list of everyone who has ever done business there. Including the teenage whizz-kid that installed security software five years ago."

Dex finished his lunch in solitude while trying to plan his next move. "At best, I'm overthinking something that could be an accident. At worst, I'm barely a glitch on someone's radar. Nothing really leads back to me."

"Who would care about a shitty pod that was dumped in a landfill? The fines for something link that would be chump change for a big corp. Unless…"

Dex stared at the pod in question for a moment. Could there be another reason? Although Gladis Corp had officially been dismantled, the reality was that nearly all of the companies under their corporate umbrella survived intact. They had split up and taken other names, smart people who were adept at finding legal loopholes would not easily be caught.

Since he didn't want to mess with the outer coating of the pod, he took an hour to remove the seat so that he could access the panels under the sleeping pad. He then used a direct line to hardwire the pod's enormous hard drive to his virtual interface.