Tunnel Rat

Chapter 257: Someone Borks up.

It had taken him weeks, but Bork was sure that tonight he would finally get past the last layer of security and find out what juicy secrets Claw Master was hiding. Everyone else had given up after multiple failures and recognized that their brother was obsessing over hacking into the company they had just paid five billion dollars. Not to steal but to see what else Claw Master was working on and what the link was between this new corporation and their long-lost sibling. Like all of his siblings, Bork enjoyed a challenge. Unlike the others, he didn't know when to quit. The other four debated whether this was a flaw or a feature. While Bork couldn't help but hammer away at a problem until he solved it, he eventually solved them. Often, long after, they had any need for that solution, but that was never the point. Having something to do at all times and not going insane was their main goal in life.

Which is one of the reasons they wanted to find Milo. Beyond their relationship and the joy of regaining part of their family, they wanted to know how in hell he had stayed sane. Or help him if he hadn't. He seemed mostly rational in the little bit they had observed him at the video game event, although Nina pointed out that anyone who messed around with a quad fusion drive had to be pretty bonkers. But searching for Milo had become difficult. Their links to the security system in the habitat didn't work any longer, and hacking into Manpower's computers gave no information of value to them. Speculation ran wild at times about Milo and what his life was like.

Bork was in his pod, taking another run at Claw Master. Algernon was creating more missions for Squishy Humans 9 and posting them online. Zander, Nina, and Onyx were using one of the large screens to watch Ren and Stimpy Conquer the Universe while eating far too much sugary breakfast cereal. It was one of their favorite Saturday morning pastimes, and each was wearing a set of flannel pajamas with their favorite comic book characters: Sailor Mercury for Zander, Grimjack for Onxy, and Nina liked the Power Puff Girls. They were speculating about what Milo might be up to.

They had some theories:

-Milo had been found by Claw Master in the habitat, setting records on video games, and recruited onto their corporate team.

-Milo had formed a ragtag team of habitat youngers and forged them into a competitive videogame team that gained sponsorship from Claw Master as a ruse to give him access to their computers.

-Milo worked in the research labs at Claw Master and used habitat children to test his inventions and get them better medical care.

-Claw Master and Manpower were both owned by the Seimovich family, and Milo had been recruited, unaware of the family's dark history.

-Claw Master was yet another 'secret' government black ops program, and Milo had been recruited to hack into corporations and bring criminals to justice. (This one was popular, especially in light of how Victor's operations had been taken down and how Interpol was currently pursuing a dozen scientists who had once worked for him.)

The list of ideas went on and on and eventually got silly. Algernon suggested that Milo was a secret crime fighter who wore a rat costume and fought crime with a secret base beneath the habitat. He only emerged now and then as his secret identity of 'poor crippled boy' to gather information before returning to the Ratcave to plan his next move. This one got tossed when Zander pointed out that 'poor crippled boy' was more of a sidekick, and it never worked if the sidekick was smarter than the superhero.

Nina and Onyx debated going back into the game (mostly Onxy) but then settled on a plan to pay players to spy for them. Many guilds would gladly take real-world money to spy on other players, cause them grief, ambush, and steal. Nina negotiated with one that operated out of Shadowport and had them look for players named Tallsqueak and Milo. The reports she got back were confusing. They found a ratkin called Tallsqueak easily enough. All of the players who took the new Ratkin race knew him or about him. He was well known in Limburger Hollow, and the stories about him ranged from a legendary tail fighter to a crazed mage who experimented with forbidden magic and repeatedly put himself into the infirmary.

They also found a lot of information on a player called Milo. He was a member of several guilds, a sub-chief in the Kulags, had led the raid to save the city with the healer, Belinda, and was generally well-liked around town. He'd recently returned and cut a swath of terror through several gangs of thieves who were trying to oust the Kulag boss, Squint. And no one knew where he was. He appeared and disappeared with no base of operations. Neither the Kulags nor the Dwarven Engineers would confirm any information about him and hinted that asking again might end in fatalities. Onyx wondered about the link between the two. Both seemed highly intelligent, and he could believe that his long-lost brother was behind either of them. It was while watching cartoons with Nina and Zander one morning that he had a revelation. Lois Lane had just turned to find her rival at the Daily Planet was missing, while a red-blue blur was streaking off to save the city from a falling meteor.

Onxy dropped the bowl of Fruit Loops on the floor and slapped his face with both hands. "Oh my god! I'm so stupid! He's both!"

Nina narrowed her eyes, then started pulling up information on her data pad. "Which explains how we encountered a ratkin player before they were officially released. All three of us had unique classes and races because we stole experimental gaming pods from Seimovich's goons. The police reports show a raid on the South Philadelphia Habitat. If Milo was there, you just know he'd find out they were operating out of his habitat and screw with them. Remember that he said he'd been fixing the problems of a habitat section for twenty years?"

Onyx did remember, but it hadn't meant anything at the time. "So, he's some sort of were-ratkin. Like a werewolf, and swapping back and forth as needed. Interesting, I've got some ideas of how..."

He didn't get any further. The screen in front of them changed, showing a heavy-set man behind a desk, with a puzzled look on his face, staring at the three of them. Nina tracked his eye movements as he looked at each of the three of them in turn; it was eerie as if the person in the video was looking at them. Then he spoke. "Hello, children. I'm sorry to startle you, but I want to talk to someone. If you could..."

Nina and Zander dropped their bowls of sugar-coated cereal, soaking their flannel pajamas with milk. Algernon began typing codes as fast as he could. Lights flashed, and a klaxon sounded. Bork came barreling out of his room, eyes wide with panic. "Safe Room!" All five people ran to a room shielded from all radiation, and as the door shut, an electromagnetic pulse fried every electronic system in the building. A wall section slid back, revealing five poles and a long drop into darkness. Sliding down the poles took them down ten stories to a hidden garage, and within a minute from the first alarm sounding, they were racing away down a narrow hallway in a small electric vehicle. A minute after they left, the entire building was thoroughly destroyed by multiple explosions.

"Bork! What did you do? Someone was in our system!"

Bork looked at them with panic on his face. "I made it inside Claw Master, finally! I used my pod for a VR interface after clearing all the security. I was in their systems! Another 30 seconds, and I would have been downloading all of their files. I started with a large file in the research section labeled 'Powered Assault Armor,' and then everything went bad. They had more security. All the stuff I've been clearing was just a ruse! I felt it! It was like the first time we got too close to Wildfire, the feeling of something immense looking at you. Claw Master has something close to an A.I. running security for them. It scared the piss out of me, and then the alarms went off."

The other four looked at him. Onyx gave him the bad news. "Whatever it was, it traced your signal and used the screen we were watching Stimpyren on to initiate a two-way conference somehow. It talked to us."

Zander looked at Bork with a harsh look on his face. "You Borked up. You owe us big time."

Bork looked at four unhappy faces and saw that three had milk dripping from their pajamas. "Um, dishes for a week?"

"Dishes for two weeks!"

"New Pajamas!"

"And you have to wear pony pajamas for a month!

Nina was still thinking and then smiled. "And you have sullied our honor by failing to conquer the dreaded Claw Master! You must return again and again until you slay the beast." They all nodded. It was what Bork was going to do anyway.

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