Immaculate Spirit 87 :

Lina Campbell was taking the bus home after leaving work. She was a twenty two year old young woman with shoulder length brown hair and brown eyes. With her 5"5", her way to dress and her withdrawn att.i.tude she was the kind of women who did not gather attention even if she was kind of cute.

Looking through the window she was in her own little world, listening to music. In her Ipod the first alb.u.m of Nathaniel Lyndon was playing in loop. Since she had hacked it the day before, she had listened to it non stop and the more she was listening to it the more she liked it. It was crazy how she had come across that singer. She was listening to her usual Kpop playlist when Youtube started playing the new song of Nathaniel, the original soundtrack of 'Now you see me'.

She had loved it from the start and had listened to it more than twenty times in a row when she got curious and started looking into the singer. She had subscribed to his Twitter and Youtube account right away, After that she had looked to see what other music he did and was sad to find only one other song with Taylor Swift. She had not listened to it as she was not a fan of hers and did not like her usual songs.

Not satisfied, she had then started to look him up on the internet to find more until she came across a newsletter saying that his alb.u.m was going to be published the same day as the release of the movie, early december. After listening and watching all of his videos she could not wait any longer and decided to have his alb.u.m now. Even if Lina was not that good at interacting with people she was insanely good in terms of computer skills.

Scouring the web it was not difficult to get her hands on his professional email address. After that, she put a spybot on it to monitor and to warn her the next time he was going to access it. The moment that he did she just followed his digital footprint on the internet until she had his IP address. Once she had that it was a piece of cake to hack into his computer and get what she wanted.

Even if she knew that what she had done was bad, she had made sure to not dwell in his personal life or his work related files. She had even reinforced his firewall before leaving his computer to make sure that n.o.body else could hack the way that she had anymore. Even if that was still not okay, she could rea.s.sure herself that beside her his future alb.u.m was known to no-one else as she would not share it with anyone.

Seeing that it was her stop she descend from the bus and started walking in the direction of her apartment. Looking at the shady neighborhood she couldn't help but sigh in her heart. She was missing their old home with their beautiful garden. Everything more simple back then. She was in IMT her future boundless, until her mom started to get sick. Slamming the memories down, she quickly dried the few tears on the corner of her eyes and realized she was in front of her apartment.

Getting her keys, she opened the door and entered her home. Her father was home, still in uniform and busy cleaning the living room.

"Hi dad." Lina said, taking her shoes off.

"Hi kiddo, how was work?" He answered with his powerful voice that always succeeded in easing her worries since she was a little girl.

"Good enough. How is mom?" She asked anxiously.

"Not that great today. She took her pills and is sleeping for now." He said with a sad smile.

"Alright, I'm going to my room." She said rea.s.sured.

"I'm going to make dinner and then I'm off to work. I will put it all in the fridge, make sure your mother eats when she wakes up." He said.

"Don"t worry dad, I will." She answered.

Entering her room, she shut the door and took off her jacket that she threw onto the bed. Sitting behind her desk, she turned on her computer. Her PC was something to be proud of for her. She had made it entirely herself spending less than two hundred dollars in cash. She was working on a custom service for a huge brand in Seattle selling and fixing damaged computers. She managed to build hers using defective parts that she scavenged from damaged computers. It was not an easy thing to do by a longshot but even if it was a hard time she had no other choice. With her mothers illness and medical bills their budget was tight to put it mildly.

Tipping her twelve character pa.s.sword, she was going to open one of her manga sites when her screen turned completely dark.

"c.r.a.p, my hard drive is acting up again." She swore.

She was tired from work and wanted to chill in front of a manga before eating and even that was not possible for her. Pressing a few commands on her keyboard there was no reaction on her screen which stayed black. Seeing there was no result, she was going to reboot her computer the hard way when finally something happened. A green line of text began to appear on her screen with a robotic voice sounding from her speaker.

'Shall we play a game?'

Jumping out of her skin, Lina knew right away that it was not the hard drive that was lagging. Someone was in her system and trolling her. That particular phrase was coming from the movie WarGames from 1983 and it was a cla.s.sic. It was the moment when the MC got his first contact with the AI. The AI wanted to play chess when he wanted to play a global thermonuclear war. It was such an iconic moment in the film that she could not miss it when confronted with it.

Throwing herself on the outlet to cut the power, a new line of text appear on her screen.

'Knock, knock, Lina.' The robotic voice said again before the computer turned off and the screen became black again.

Lina was starting to freak out. That last line was really scary. When she was on the internet and visiting some dark web site where hackers tended to chill of she never used her real name. Seeing that someone managed to get it and force her way was something she always thought was not possible considering her security.

In her mind, she was thinking non stop about who could hold a grudge against her but she could not find any answer. Beside some hacking of a few manga and music she had never done something out of line. She was hanging in forums deep in the dark web more to talk with people who have the same pa.s.sion as her than for the love of hacking in itself.

Something about that last line kind of stuck with her. She was sure it was coming from an another movie but she could not place it right now. That's when someone knocked two times on the front door.