Rebecca had followed the strange man out of the room into a short hallway that led to a balcony overseeing the hospital-like chamber that she had found herself in after waking up. The room was rectangular and about the size of a football field, in the middle was a small office surrounded by glass walls, there was also a shining metal dome, walls filled with medical technology, an operation quarter and doors leading to other rooms, most of this chamber, however, was filled with beds.

On three of these beds people were being treated, a fourth bed was now empty but the machines that stood there made it pretty clear that that was where she had laid. “w-what is this place, she asked herself out loud. The man next to her laughed and for a moment she felt shivers crawl all over her, “this is the med bay of my headquarter.”

She looked around her and then back at the man realizing what he had just said, “what do you mean headquarter?” Rebecca didn’t know what she had to expect from this place, a secret hospital, some creepy research center maybe, the word “headquarter” and its meaning had not really been on her list of possible answers that this man would give. Even before she was a gang member she knew that saying something like that meant that you were in the most important place of an organization!

“do you mean that this is all part of an organization, she asked. “well the med bay is part of my headquarters but yes this place is from where I coordinate all operations of my own little organization if the government can have a secret, black ops one then why can’t a humble hacker like myself have one too?”

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Sam was glad it had gone so well, he had half expected her to go berserk again but apparently, the confusion suppressed the activation of that part of her ability, for now, he had concluded that her ability went out of control when triggered by adrenaline or fear, as long as those things were absent she would be in control of her powers.

Well, it was probably more like she did not know how to use them yet, but she would need to learn about how to do that soon because if she would go bananas if someone simply scared her things could get ugly. ‘A living firebomb and a superpowered earth-shaking berserker, he thought to himself, yes Sam, definitely a good idea to put them in an underground base, definitely no chance this will backfire on you.’

In his defense, he hadn’t known which powers these people had when he brought in the container, for all he knew they could just have minor abilities like extraordinary reflexes and eyesight or a mindreading ability, as it turned out the two people that had already awakened were more powerful than that, the greater the power the more dangerous the side effects, that seemed to be true for all powers he had heard of thus far.

Medrano’s research also confirmed it before these four arrived, now she would have evidence and Sam already knew that for the next few days she would petition to call this, “the Medrano rule”, or something like that. “anyways the med bay is linked to the research lab and is the place that was designed to heal and help the wounded should anything happen.” Sam saw that Rebecca was astonished by all of this so he decided to explain a bit to comfort her.

“It is part of an underground complex that lies beneath a mansion which serves as our main entrance and exit from this place, he said, but here underground is where everything truly happens.” Rebecca looked at him, “how did you….” “pay for this?” Sam finished her sentence, “my codename is hackmeister, guess what I do best?” Her eyes shot open, “the hackmeister!”

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“hackmeister.” Rebecca had heard that name before, when she had been in the Bronx gang for some time she had met some hackers, most of them had a somewhat edgy nickname that they often left behind for those that they had hacked, most were just people trying to be arrogant, trying to sound cool with names like, Cybermind or Techno titan. But there were also hackers who chose a name only after getting to a certain level of skill. She had met one of those, Terrabyte was how he called himself, a pretty shy and friendly guy who could hack police computers as if he were opening a bottle.

She had seen Terabyte completely change from a shy guy to a terrifying calculated person once he sat behind his desk, hackers were scary when they were doing their job. He had told her that true hackers like himself always made sure they could at least enter police or security computers before giving themselves a name they could use to gain reputation in the criminal world.

But he had also told her that even though he was good he was not on the level of the best hackers like “the hackmeister”. Terrabyte had said that name as if it was sacred, as if it was the name of some kind of hacking deity of the dark web, meaning that whoever this guy was he was a bigshot. He had explained to her about who he was, a mysterious hacker that wiped out every trace that could possibly be found and had stolen money without anyone noticing from the richest people in the world.

He had also told her the story of how he had introduced himself to the criminal underworld, Rebecca didn’t remember the whole story in detail but she still knew the gist of it. Apparently, before he revealed himself it was thought that no one could ever do all these “ghost hackings” as they called them back then, as the work of one person. One crime lord had tried to go after these “ghost hackers”, but he messed up big time and infuriated the hacker who made him bankrupt and imprisoned within half a month.

After that the hacker had sent a message, saying that he was the one who had done in the crime lord and that he was the “Hackmeister”.

If this was the same hackmeister then he could very well have stolen enough money for all this. Then she realized she had said that out loud!

The man looked at her, the mask hid his facial expression, she couldn’t tell if he was surprised or happy that she had heard of his name before, even though he seemed like he was genuinely wanting to help her Rebecca knew better than to just trust every random guy that offered help and if this was truly a dangerous hacker…..’

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Sam could see Rebecca thinking, he wasn’t surprised she’d heard about him though after all her files stated that she had been a member of a gang that worked with hackers and many hackers were fans of him. Probably they had told her about the time he introduced himself, something he had enjoyed a great deal.

Suddenly his pondering was interrupted by a voice sounding in his commlink, it was Layla. “Father you must come quickly, patient 4 is waking up as well!”