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Shadowrun: Fire & Frost

Page 26

by Kai O'Connal


  “Do we have a visual yet?” Elijah asked.

  “Not yet,” Tango said as he moved holo-vid screens around. “Once he’s fully into the host we should notice.”

  “And we’ll see what he’s sees?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  Eyetooth frowned. How was that possible? To see what a hacker could see inside the Matrix? Unless they planned on taking a look at the host’s sculpt. That was possible—the computer rendering a 3-D image of what Leung would see. That is, if he got in.

  “We have activity on the box.” Tango moved two screens and pointed to the one on the right. “He’s hacking—”

  All at once the screens disappeared.

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know. The device is still online. Leung is still in there, we just don’t know where.”

  Elijah leaned on the station’s cabinet. “What?”

  Tango faced him. “He just … disappeared.”

  The lines of the host had solidified into a door, and that’s what Leung was trying to open. Hacking in was a little bit more complex than he thought it’d be. He applied a variety of maneuvers he’d learned over his career, and what finally gave him access was an ID he took from the documents he’d found in that toy store. The door opened, and he stepped through.

  The host, disappointingly, was blank. A black-and-white grid stretched out in front of Leung on all sides. Either being left in the cold had damaged the sculpt used, or none had ever been applied. He immediately copied information from the device onto his deck. The icon itself wasn’t anything he recognized. He did a quick double check to make sure he had everything in place before he tapped the ARO.

  At first nothing happened.

  Then two field screens came up on AR. One requiring a name, the other a password.

  How old school is this?

  Since he logged in with the ID he’d spoofed, he typed in that name and then ran through a complex set of passwords based on the sequence that gave him entry to the commlink. He was equally surprised when the password was the same one he’d used to gain access to the device. Maybe this thing was owned by someone for a special use? Only home users or Matrix Security illiterates used the same login and passwords with more than one entry.

  He had little time to think as a second doorway appeared in front of him. It looked like a regular door, but his diagnostics told him it was a link to a host. He immediately checked to see where this host was located, and felt his jaw drop.

 

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