Chapter 48: Carrasco

Carrasco laid in a corner of his single room shack, atop his makeshift bed – some rags piled in a corner. The sole light bulb wasn’t working but he wasn’t in complete darkness. Moonlight streaked through the seven bullet holes on the roof providing the faintest of illumination.

Not that Carrasco needed the light. His eyes were glazed out, his mind deep within the virtual network.

His virtual avatar – which looked exactly like his real self – materialized in his home room, a small empty red space. He was dressed in a white suit and black sneakers.

“Couch.”

He vocalized and a worn leather couch popped into existence. He crashed into it. The leather squeaked and creaked as he settled himself.

Carrasco glanced at the hovering time stamp in the corner of the room.

‘Almost midnight, virtual time.’

“Notifications,” he said.

A list of notifications popped up mid-air.

The latest of his notifications was a payment confirmation and a link attached to it.

/The Rouge Lounge: Madam_Rouge-ext: KaibaCore-7/

He motioned a hand to click on the link. The list disappeared and a loading circle appeared in its place.

He watched as the usually instantaneous loading process went on and on.

‘It’s taking forever to load.’

Newtown’s network reception was horrendous. Sure it had only been about 30 seconds but that was 30 seconds too long. Because depending on how long the lag was he might miss some of Madam Rouge’s stream.

The wait was excruciating. Was there anything more annoying than a slow connection? He had the mind to abort. Perhaps today wasn’t meant to be.

‘Fuck that, I already paid.’

The wait was doing little to wane the anticipation in his eyes.

He clapped twice, shortcutting from his home room into his settings room. His avatar materialized floating in a dark room, illuminated by countless strings of green code circling around him.

“Network provider,” he said and all the irrelevant data flashed out of existence, leaving only a chunk of code which displayed the extension to the network tower his chip was connected to.

He tapped on the extension and his avatar was sucked into the network tower’s mainframe. He materialized in an endless dark space with endless code swimming through the space like fluid constellations.

He isolated his chip domain and increased his authorization within the tower, giving his chip priority over the masses.

‘That should boost the connection a bit.’

He chuckled at his own genius.

Clapped once and returned to his home room just in time to witness the loading circle shatter, scatter into countless specks of light, which spread out changing the scenery as they spread.

His home room transformed into a virtual construct of the Rouge Lounge and he found himself in Madam Rouge’s suite, on the velvet couch and watched as Madam Rouge materialized before him mid-strip tease.

Carrasco licked his lips.

‘I’m not too late then.’

He’d missed the introductions but she hadn’t gotten to any of the good stuff yet. Although they were alone she was live streaming the same performance to her other customers.

So anything he missed was irretrievable.

Not to mention there was limited interaction but Madam Rouge had a way of making you not notice too much, a way of making her performance seem personal despite it being a mass production.

‘It also helps that she layers subliminal waves into her showpiece.’

Though wave controls could be used to manipulate, as a cybermage he was trained to notice foreign thoughts and even block them out.

Even so he couldn’t help but let Madam Rouge into his mind. Her subliminals had a different effect on him compared to her unassuming victims.

There was an indescribable intimacy having a lover occupy some of his mind space, imprinting sweet nothings into his psyche. An experience a non-cybermage could never comprehend.

She missed you. The foreign thought echoed in the back of his mind.

Madam Rouge met his gaze as if to reinforce how much she missed him and playfully worked off her long fur coat.

Beneath the coat she had on a matching skirt and tank top, the outfit was a mixture of orange and black woven in an ancient tribal pattern he vaguely recognized.

She wore the most exotic garments.

‘But that is part of her lustre—’

He paused, clapped his hands twice, and was immediately pulled out of the construct and shortcut back into the settings room.

He was horny but he wasn’t pussydrunk. He’d noticed when his location details were accessed.

The dark room seemed normal and the strings of green code flowed uninterrupted as usual but Carrasco knew better.

He swirled, examined the circling code, eyes darting back and forth across each line of data. He paused, raised a palm to halt the moving code.

Isolated a chunk of code, frowned at it and gestured opening his hands to expand the infected area.

“Fuck me.”

He’d half-hoped it was a random hack but it was clear he’d been targeted. He felt his heart ache thinking how Madam Rouge might’ve been involved.

He’d downloaded malware the moment he tapped on the Rouge Lounge link.

And the malware hadn’t taken long to perform its duty: disabling his chip’s encryption software. And had needed even less time to triangulate his position which meant they had access to KaibaCore satellites.

“They found me.”

He couldn’t be sure how far away his pursuers were. Although he was quick to notice, there was a slight time distortion between virtual and reality.

Carrasco shut his eyes hard in virtual and opened his eyes back in the shack.

He groped round for his backpack as his eyes readjusted to reality, leapt to his feet and bolted out the one and only door of his rented shack.

The sooner he made his escape. The less likely it was he would cross paths with his pursuers.

Carrasco turned into an alley way and froze. The alley was empty but he felt as if someone loomed over him. He glanced up. A droid and a mech suited cybermage were hurdling down toward him.

“Fuck me.”

He cursed his lapse in foresight. Of course they’d come from the skies to have an eagle eye view of the slums.

He tipped his head back, another droid incoming to pincer.

He was surrounded? Should he fight his way out? How many more droids and/or cybermages were within the vicinity?

He didn’t dare move recklessly.

‘Is this the day I get caught.’