SPECTRE

3| VIRUS DETECTED

As I sat there glaring at the hologlass walls of the cubic cage, the wall suddenly opened up and a woman who looked no more than forty years old walked in, her high heels clicking against the floor as she strode, the epitome of calm confidence.

The centre of the floor seemed to unfold into a chair as she walked there, in time for her to sit down. As soon as she had, a table rose out of the floor, and she placed her clasped hands on it.

She didn't seem to like beating around the bush.

"Who are you?" she asked directly.

"Spectre." I didn't try to evade the question. I knew how to read people, and she wasn't the kind that I could escape from.

She narrowed her eyes. "Your real name, please."

I stayed silent.

A name is something that is dangerous. As an anonymous identity, giving it away to another person could help them pull up your roots and find out who you are, or who you've been, and the consequences could be fatal.

I was not giving away my name.

The woman glared at me. "Your name, miss."

"Spectre."

She looked like she was about to scream at me, but inhaled sharply and adjusted her glasses. "Fine, Spectre. What were you doing last night?"

I couldn't see it, but I could feel my lips curling, full of contempt. "You honestly don't know? What, was my hacking so not obvious that you don't know that a lone, seventeen-year-old girl was busting right through your pathetic security system?"

The woman pressed her lips together. "So, our readings are correct. You did manage to hack into the strongest security system in the world."

I rolled my eyes. "Strong? That was strong? I hacked that in minutes."

She stood up. "Follow me."

"I can't exactly mov---oh." I broke off as the hologlass vanished and the chair started wheeling towards her, following her footsteps.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The chair followed her through corridors of sterile steel walls that sometimes seemed to slope downwards, sometimes seemed to be curved, and sometimes split off into even more identical corridors. After a while, I gave up trying to record the way and stared at the woman's back instead.

My fingers started to twitch. I was so used to moving them---tapping them on holokeyboards, drawing out invisible code lines in the air, and pressing them on buttons---that going too long without moving my fingers just felt strange.

Eventually, we ended up at a darker grey door. The woman unlocked it with a key, believe it or not, a key, which meant it wasn't programmed or technological at all. Nobody even uses keys anymore, and that is part of what makes finding shelter so easy. Hacking into passcode storage spaces or body scanners is just so easy it's laughable. To be entirely honest, though, nearly all the cybersecurity systems in the world are laughable. I can access most of those systems' core programming in less than a second. My record, one that I am extremely proud of, is 0.0001 seconds.

As I said, positively pathetic.

When I was little, I'd always shown affinity with computers and tech. One day, I found a hacking infographic from a website, downloaded TOR, and got started.

My skills surpassed masters' in less than a year.

But enough about the past. The present is what's important and very confusing.

I can handle military-grade firewalls. I can handle creating a hidden, unbeatable virus. I can handle deciphering the hardest passwords.

I cannot handle being strapped to a chair, helpless to do anything.

The lock clicked, and the woman strode inside, the chair following her and bringing me along with it. Thanks to my hands being trapped, I couldn't even infect the tech around with SPECTRE to let me escape, or hack into the chair to let me go.

But I wish I could.