People had been found in white pods all over the world, only to be taken away. Not long after the paramedics left, two strange men had shown up, forced their way into Byron's apartment, and taken him and the chair away in a plain van.
Now Molly stood on the sidewalk with the van gone, and only one clue: their license plate. She had managed to trace the plate to a company called Venus Computing Solutions.
She headed back to Byron's apartment building where she had parked her car, but knew she couldn't make it in time to follow the van. Unless the van was driving to the airport, it couldn't be going too far. She had to find out where it was going.
She jumped into her car and typed "Venus Computer Solutions" into Google Maps. After a few seconds, it came up with a list of addresses for the company's offices around the country. However, the company headquarters had its base in Yorktown, an hour and a half away from Byron's apartment in Brooklyn by car.
Molly didn't hesitate. She called her friend Gina to have her record the morning's classes, and started driving.
On the highway, a few times she caught sight of the van that had taken Byron, convincing her she was headed to the right place. Traffic was heavy making her way out of Brooklyn and through Manhattan, but lightened up as she drove into the more rural areas of New York. She only stopped for gas, some Mountain Dew, and a sausage biscuit before continuing her drive.
Just as she started thinking she had done the craziest thing ever and should turn around and let the police handle it, Molly spotted the building ahead of her.
Along a tree-lined road, a large fence surrounded a compound with a sign out front that read, "Venus Computing Solutions Research Center." Through the fence, leaves and trees blocked the view.
She drove by to check out the entrance. A front gate with the company name printed on it had a guard tower next to it, and two men in blue uniforms and carrying semi-automatic rifles glared at her as she went by. Through the gate, she could see a long road leading to a domed building in the distance. It looked big enough to be an aircraft hangar.
Molly kept on driving until she could pull off the road without being seen, and went back to her smartphone to look up Venus Computing Solutions. It didn't give much. She found the company's website, which was just a bunch of stock photos of smiling women sitting at computers. The "About" section just said Venus was an "innovative producer of high-end computing solutions." It had a stylized logo of a woman standing in an oyster shell.
She looked the company up on Wikipedia, and found an extremely short entry, just listing how the company was founded three years ago by someone named Thomas Works, and how it produced database management programs. It all felt suspiciously vague, and none of it seemed like it would have anything to do with trapping people in weird pods and kidnapping them. She would have to find answers herself.
A computing company this size would have an intranet that would have the real information she needed, but wouldn't be accessible from the outside. At least, that was the idea. She knew ways around that.
She checked her phone for the nearest Starbucks. Where there were computer geeks, there were Starbucks. Sure enough, she found one only a few minutes away.
She drove to it, parked, and dug through the backseat of her car to find her laptop. She booted it up, and loaded some of her best exploit programs before heading inside.
Glancing around the crowded restaurant, she noted several men and women in suits wearing ID cards that said "Venus" with the company logo.
"Perfect," she whispered.
She ordered a large iced white chocolate mocha, and found a table where she could set up her laptop and connect it to Starbucks' Wi-Fi network. Once connected, the open network allowed her to see all the other devices connected to it, which would be pretty much everyone in the shop, especially the Venus employees.
She spent a few minutes running a program that would let her decrypt and bypass the Wi-Fi's security and hack into the other connected devices. She focused on Android phones especially since they were more vulnerable.
She went through the phones one by one, searching their apps. On the third phone, she found what she had been searching for, an app called Venus Remote Login. It was a lot like many company apps, intended to let employees access parts of the company intranet from outside the network. It was supposed to be just as secure as the intranet but had a security weakness in the form of employees.
She pushed an app onto the hacked phone called Crakrr, disguised with the name Security Update so it wouldn't be noticed. The Venus Remote app already had the employee's username saved to it, so Crakrr began trying passwords, and quickly spat out the login that worked.
The employee password was "Password123."
Molly rolled her eyes and whispered, "Seriously?"
People would always be the weak point of any security system, because they hated strong security measures even more than hackers did. A company could have a three-foot thick metal door with ten locks that required seven keycards, a fingerprint, and a urine sample to open, but employees would get sick of it and prop the door open with a brick.
With the name of the app, a username, and a password, she only needed to grab the phone's IP address and the IP address of the remote server. With that, she didn't need the hacked phone anymore. She logged out, downloaded the Venus Remote app onto her own phone, and used it to log in and dig around.
It just had standard stuff like checking your timecard, reviewing employee benefits, and getting company email. She rooted through the email but didn't find anything more interesting than a requisition order for some new chairs, and plans for a birthday party for someone named Agatha Blumenthal.
Still, she had her way in.
Molly packed up and headed back to her car to drive back to Venus Computer Solutions Research Center. She sipped her mocha while pulling off onto the side of the road near the fence, out of sight of the guard tower, and went back to her laptop.
This time, she went searching for an encrypted Wi-Fi network. A tech company this size would have to have a Wi-Fi network for employees. Sure enough, she found several with names like VCS-342. With the large wooded areas surrounding the compound, no one else could be using them. They had to belong to Venus.
When she connected to the company Wi-Fi, her browser automatically loaded a warning page about accessing a restricted area. It asked for a login. She crossed her fingers before typing in the employee username and password she had gotten from the Starbucks.
A welcome screen loaded, and she yelled, "Yes."
She had gotten halfway to where she needed to be; inside Venus Computing Solutions network.
She used the intranet connection and the IP addresses she had recovered to run a program to find unencrypted data. With that, she could gain permission to the admin account. It took a while so she spent time browsing the company intranet.
Most of it felt like any other company, but one section of company news listed achievements like "We've Got Our Hundredth Player!" and "Virtual Rendering Team Boosted FPS By 50%!"
Sooner than she expected, her computer came up with the admin password. She grant herself more access, and went deeper into the network.
She immediately hit a wall with much of the user content locked off, requiring higher security clearance. Given enough time, she could get the clearance she needed, but she couldn't sit here outside for much longer. Somebody was bound to notice. However, she did find the perfect route inside.
If she was going to get in, she couldn't smash down the front gate. She'd be dead before she reached the doors.
She couldn't crawl over the walls or lower herself in from the ceiling like Mission Impossible, because she was just a college student, not a super-spy.
She would have to be invited in, and she had an idea how to do it.
A schedule for tour groups and new hires hidden in the HR department fit perfectly. She typed out a suitable entry for herself, set the event for fifteen minutes from now, and closed her laptop
.
She brushed her hair and put on makeup to make herself seem more presentable, but was left still wishing she had changed out of her T-shirt and jeans. She started the car again and headed for the front gate.
As she pulled up to the gate, a security guard standing next to a yellow-and-black barrier came to the window with a clipboard and an angry glare.
"Can I help you?" the guard asked in a way that told her he wasn't expecting a good answer.
She gave her brightest smile. "Hi, sorry, I'm running a little late. Alisha Graham from Key Sentinel. I have a one o'clock appointment for a tour."
The guard shook his head. "Sorry, no visitors scheduled for today."
She panicked a little. Of course, they wouldn't have a record of it at the front gate. Still, she made a show of pointing at his clipboard. "Are you sure? I talked to somebody to confirm, like, five minutes ago."
He held up the clipboard. "Nothing scheduled. You'll have to--"
"Can you double-check? It was an online appointment, last minute. They might not have put it on your thing there."
The guard narrowed his eyes, but did reach down and unclip his walkie-talkie. He pressed the button as he said, "This is the front gate. We got a woman out here, Alisha Graham. Says she's here for a tour."
He paused for a moment, still giving Molly his hardest glare, then straightened as his walkie-talkie crackled. "Oh, really? Well, it wasn't on my sheet. Okay."
The guard clipped the walkie-talkie to his belt while pointing to the gate. "All right, you're good to go. Straight ahead. There's a parking lot to the right."
The second guard came up to them and slipped a blue badge through the car window. "You park in the blue visitor's area."
Molly nodded and broadened her smile, feeling sweat prickle on her forehead. "Thanks so much."
The gates slid open, and she drove up the path to the building. Now that she could see it clearly, it looked more like a football stadium than a company headquarters. The huge domed roof curved down to walls of glass, and people milling in and out of the building looked like ants against its size.
She took deep breaths as she pulled into a parking lot with blue numbered signs hanging over the spaces. She had gotten inside, but still didn't have a good idea what she would do next. She needed to find Byron and get him out, but she didn't know where he was or how she could get him out of the pod. Still, she had to try.
She walked up to the entrance of the research center to see a lobby as big as her apartment building. At the center of the tiled floor, a small desk stood under a swirling cloud. The cloud seemed to be a cluster of metal filings that hovered in the shape of a human brain. Molly assumed it worked by magnetism, but she wasn't sure.
At the small desk, a young and beautiful blonde woman got up from her chair and walked up to greet Molly. She spoke with a British accent. "Hello, I'm Jamie."
Molly shook her hand. "Alisha Graham."
Jamie placed her palms together. "I'm so sorry, Miss Graham. For some reason, we missed your appointment on our schedule until just a few minutes ago. No one's available from HR, so I'll be conducting your tour."
Molly gave her a bright smile. "Great."
Jamie held out a badge that read "Temp" on it. "You'll need to wear this at all times while in the building."
Molly clipped the badge onto her shirt. She had done it. They bought it. So far, so good.
Jamie began walking to an elevator. "So, I was told you're with Key Sentinel. Can you go into more detail on what that is?"
Molly considered her careful answer, purposefully vague. She had just chosen the name at random because it sounded authoritative. "Well, we're looking to buy some products from Venus, but wanted to get a sense of how you use it and how we can implement it."
Jamie's eyes widened as she stopped in front of an elevator and pushed the call button. "Really? I wasn't aware we were still selling products to vendors."
"Well, it's a special initiative under Mister Works. Can't really talk too much about it."
Jamie smiled while the elevator doors opened. "I thought this had to be something rather hush-hush. You're very special. I haven't given a tour in over a year. Not since the VRV project went into beta."
The two women stepped into the elevator. Molly couldn't see any buttons. Instead, Jamie pressed the key card around her neck against a panel and the elevator began to move.
"So," Jamie said, "what do you know about Venus Online?"
Molly paused, again trying to think of a vague answer that wouldn't give her away. "Uh, not much, to be honest. Let's just pretend I knew nothing about what you do here."
"Fair enough. Well, I think you're in for a treat. I work here, and even I'm amazed at what the company has done in the last year alone. You're about to see that we here at Venus Computing Solutions are on the cutting-edge of virtual reality technology."
Molly blinked, unable to hold back her confusion. "Virtual reality?"
"Well, to call it virtual reality is really a bit of a misnomer. Mister Works likes to call it 'alternate reality.' A fully simulated world that will one day replace our physical world. Venus Online is nothing less than the next big thing, the technology that will usher in a revolution that changes everything we are and everything we know. Bigger than smartphones and the Internet combined."
The elevator stopped, and the doors slid open as Jamie said, "Welcome to the future, Miss Graham."
Molly had been hoping that she could walk through the building, see Byron's pod, grab him out of it, and run. Now she saw how wrong her plan had been.
Molly looked out of the elevator at the same egg-shaped pod she had seen in Byron's apartment, but it wasn't alone. Another pod stood next to it, and behind it, and in front of it. The pods stretched as far as she could see across a massive floor, hundreds of them.
"Oh boy," Molly breathed.
Chapter 6
BYRON CHARGED into a huge open area, and it felt even more open after the confinement of the prison.
It seemed to be an entry area or lobby. Straight ahead, he faced the elevator doors leading to the rest of the ship, and they seemed miles away.
A long desk split the center of the room, he assumed for some sort of administrator but it was empty now. More red barrels stood in the corners for some reason, but the room was otherwise empty.
To his left, a doorway opened into another room with rows of bunk beds. That seemed to be the barracks Oversoul had mentioned. Just as he looked at it, dozens of Death Troopers rushed out, all carrying laser rifles.
Byron wished he could activate his shield code, but his NRG implant had to cool down after using the fireball code. Instead, Byron crouched down to make a smaller target as he fired his laser. His shots took down the soldiers at the front of the group while more came up behind them. The soldiers didn't even look down at the ones who had been killed, just climbed over them or used them for cover.
In his vision, he saw the XP boosts from the combat.
+500 XP
+500 XP
+500 XP
+500 XP
The Death Troopers fired back immediately, sending a wall of energy that slammed into the floor and walls behind him. He choked as smoke gushed into the air from scorched surfaces, and the metal walls melted slightly from the impacts.
Some bolts hit Byron, knocking him back. It felt like hot coals thrown at him and for a moment, he thought his arms and legs had been burned off, but he looked down to see himself intact. The shots would have killed him at his old level, but as a level twenty-five, he had enough health to absorb the impacts and still keep half his health bar.
He didn't want to chance taking another hit so he dove to the desk running down the length of the floor. From behind its curved edge, he poked up to fire shots from behind it. More Death Troopers crumpled with smoking holes in their chests or heads.
+500 XP
+500 XP
Laser bolts came flying out of the prison entrance from the other prisoners, s
cattering the Death Troopers around the room. A few were killed, but not enough.
Coldsteel and Kiki dashed out to find shelter next to Byron, firing rounds of their own. Xin took shelter behind a pillar. The other prisoners hung back in the prison area for cover.
Among the other unarmed prisoners, only Chetaara had the ability to fight back, hurling bolts of lightning at the incoming soldiers. The soldiers who took the bolts collapsed, left twitching on the floor.
"Spread out," Byron yelled. "We need to flank them!"
Coldsteel and Kiki moved further left and right, spreading their gunfire into a cone that closed on the enemy soldiers.
Byron pulled the trigger on his rifle and it just buzzed. He looked down at the rifle's small display to see it blinking zero. He had run out of ammunition. Great.
Peeking out from behind the desk, some of the bodies of the fallen soldiers had faded away, leaving only their rifles. If only he could reach them.
Kiki called out, "I'm almost empty!"
Coldsteel snarled, "Me too! And they're just getting started!"
She spoke the truth. More Death Troopers rushed from the door of the barracks. There had to be at least thirty of them.
Byron had no NRG left, but he did have his high stats. He had to use them to try to get more ammo.
He bolted out from behind the desk and moved faster than ever before, leaping in a serpentine movement while lasers fried the air around him.
One Death Trooper rushed at him. Byron used his empty rifle like a club to smash the soldier in the head.
He stooped to grab one of the fallen rifles, dropped into a shoulder roll, and came up with the rifle blazing.
The Death Troopers screamed and fell one by one, cut down in a row in front of him. He took at least five of them, but more came up behind them, using the bodies of their fallen as shields.
Death's Revenge: A LitRPG Sci-Fi Adventure (Venus Online 5) Page 5