You've gotta be careful when accepting jobs from shady strangers in a world of cyber-augmented minds.
 Variun could have stood to be a little more cautious today.

19. Hacked

It was a simple mission, all things considered. All Variun had to do was get in, acquire some data, and get out unseen. Nothing the red haired jaguar hadn’t done before. The only thing peculiar about this job was the shady contact. It was common for people to want to protect their identities when they were involved in illegal jobs, but this particular client had explicitly requested for Variun to use a purpose built earpiece for the mission. With this, he would only have a one way connection to his employer, at least that’s what he was told. Normally he would have refused at the risk of losing contact with his party, but it was a short and simple heist with minimal security; Variun was confident in his own abilities to pull it off quickly and alone.

He’d been scouting the target building for a good few minutes now. It was a small takeaway joint, one of your jack-of-all-trades establishments that simply tried to offer as much as possible on the cheap. It wasn’t so unsuspecting to Variun however; the establishment may have looked innocent enough, but if he was sent to steal data from here, it was most likely a front for some criminal group. If that was the case, it would mean that the security was standing by on the inside. With a press to his seemingly naked ear, Variun sent a signal through the earpiece to let his contact know he had arrived.
“Ah good, you’re here,” spoke a disembodied voice into his ear. The contact was definitely male, and his words came through the device without the slightest hint of feedback; it was as if the tiny mechanical speaker was whispering to Variun.
“Follow my instructions to the letter, okay?” The contact insisted.
“Whatever you say,” Variun replied, rolling his eyes. It was going to be one of those jobs.

Keeping low to the ground, the jaguar glided between the shadows and various positions of cover in order to keep himself hidden. He found the security camera blind-spots and moved with the grace and timing of a skilled dancer to avoid detection. Before long, Variun had made his way into an office on the top floor of the building with the help of his contact’s guidance in his ear.
“What you’re looking for should be along the left wall,” the man instructed.
Sitting conspicuously on a shelf out of the corner of Variun’s eye was a small metal server, personal sized for external, and often criminal, use. It couldn’t be this easy, could it?

Variun pulled out his datapad, only to be stopped by the voice in his ear.
“No no, you’re going to need to interface directly,” he said sternly. “Now you’ll have to do exactly as I say. Place a hand on the server controls.” The instructions were clear, coming to his mind like a second train of thought, and Variun felt his muscles responding quickly to do just as asked. It was strange; he’d hacked into dozens of databases before, but now he trusted some deeper instinct to do as the man said. As he laid his hands upon a touchscreen on the server, the Jaguar watched it respond to his presence and ask for optical verification.

“Good intuition,” Variun mused. He had to concede that his client was right about this one or he would have tripped a very easily missed failsafe.
“Well it doesn’t matter, I can’t get you past this without a connection to your optic,” the client grumbled, leaving Variun on edge. His employer wanted control of his augmented eye, likely to replicate an iris that would get him into the database.
“Not on your life,” scoffed the jaguar; though it was more out of principal as mind entertained the ludicrously dangerous request for some reason.
“Follow my instructions and let me interface with your augmentations.” Once again the voice was clear and most certainly not asking permission. An odd compulsion filled Variun as he allowed his client a semblance of control over his body. His fingers unthinkingly tapped a couple of buttons on his wrist, he’d done so a hundred times before, but now he was left vulnerable to this person he’d never even met. Why did he do that?

There was a near inaudible whir of machinery as the jaguar’s mechanical optics realigned by design. Variun bent down eye level with the server’s optical reader, letting a faint flash of LED’s fill his vision as it scanned his pupil. The identification was accepted, and he waited for further instructions, though he could feel something was wrong. Variun felt as if he was being watched from inside of his head, and the radio silence of his client didn’t put him at ease. All of a sudden there was a feeling of blind confusion through his head as his thoughts were pulled against each other. It was like a numb headache, there was no pain but his mind didn’t feel together at the same time. Variun clutched the side of his head as he felt machinery and neurons fighting for control of his mind and body. That bastard had uploaded more than just a new eye colour for him.

The words he’d heard over the course of the night echoed through his warring mind as an almost physical manifestation of the virus.
“Follow…. –y instructions.” “Do ex-…. as I say.” It was the same voice but much deeper in his mind now, repeating a thousand times faster than his conscious thoughts could keep up with. He was impossible to ignore, and eventually even Variun’s arms fell limp at his sides as he lost the battle for his own body. Everything he saw was like static on a TV screen, his mind was too busy being torn apart to make sense of his surroundings anymore; he could feel himself coming apart with every second.


“Do exactly as I say,” the words were coming through clearly again, louder than his own thoughts this time. All of a sudden, the door to the office swung open and a suited boar stood in the entrance flanked by two guards.
“Stand,” he ordered. The boar’s voice was the same as his client’s over the earpiece. Variun’s fate was dawning on him as the last vestiges of independent thought were snuffed out of his mind like wires being ripped out of a motherboard. His legs obeyed immediately, bringing him to a stiff, standing position before his treacherous employer. No... his Boss.
“Some useful tech on you,” snorted the boar. “You’ll make a fine addition.”
Somewhere in the back of his mind, Variun was still screaming his defiance. But that thought was so distant, and so hard to listen to against the chorus of voices telling him to obey, just as he was programmed to do. The jaguar simply stared forward and with a focussed nod, and accepted his place.