Zoe watched traffic and buildings fly by for a few minutes. When the car stopped at a light, she was barraged by malware infested ads. Thankfully, Bug Zapper stopped her from seeing them or being infected.

“Ugh. How do people deal with all the ads?”

“An adblocker or just by being used to it,” Jimmy replied shrugging his shoulders.

“My logs show Bug Zapper has stopped 100 ads that have hit my system since you stopped for the light.”

“That’s a good blocker,” Jimmy said absently as the light changed. He stepped on the gas. “I’ve seen 20 ads and my blocker has blocked 40 more.”

“Why have you seen any?”

“Because I have those companies or products whitelisted.”

“Why would you whitelist any of them?”

“Because I either like the product or they pay me a couple of credits to view each ad,” Jimmy answered. He glanced at Zoe and turned back to the road. “Look at the side of the buildings. What do you see?”

“Billboards, news feeds, and other ads,” Zoe replied. “Do the ad companies pay anyone to watch ads?”

“Nah. You have to be part of a market research project.”

“Oh. That’s not for me,” Zoe said. “Too bad Bug Zapper doesn’t automatically crash those malware infected ads.”

“Would be nice,” Jimmy agreed. “Why don’t you slice it to do so?”

“That’s not a bad idea,” Zoe admitted. “How much longer until we get to the dealership?”

“It’ll be another 15 minutes until we get to Tommy’s, so probably 45 minutes or so. Why?”

“I did say I was going to work on my daemons,” Zoe answered.

“Gotcha,” Jimmy replied. He put the car on auto drive. “With this traffic, it might take even longer. I’m going to surf the net and let the car drive to Tommy’s.”

“Slacker!”

“Nah. It’s smart use of the time. Now taking a nap is slacking.”

*

Zoe thought about what she wanted. It would be sweet to have a daemon that would combine her ICE with her offensive daemons instead of just having Bug Zapper automatically zap ads. Though she wanted that too. Checking her ICE and daemons, Zoe decided Avenging Angel would be a good base since it was defensive and would return attacks.

If she could modify the Angel to use her other daemons to attack ads and other attackers, that would be exactly what she wanted and allow her to focus on other tasks. Zoe pulled up the daemon’s source code in her coding suite. She had been thrilled that CyberBionic had included the source code for all her daemons and ICE as part of her frame’s software package.

The Angel proved surprisingly easy to customize. All it took was adding a few permissions for it to access her ICE and other daemons. Half an hour later she was done, and the code compiled. The car stopped and Zoe decided it was a good time to test her work.

“Damn!” Zoe cursed.

“I know I look good, but you don’t need to tell me,” Tommy said getting into the passenger seat. He had insisted that Zoe get in the back, and she hadn’t felt like arguing, so he got to sit up front.

“I didn’t mean that for you. I just got infected with some malware from an ad that my ICE missed.”

“Should I take you to Doc Brown’s?” Jimmy asked.

“Nah. Just call her instead,” Tommy said before Zoe could answer. “Malware is something she can handle remotely.”

“Alright. I’ll try that,” Zoe said. She called Claire. “Hi Doc. Can you do something about malware remotely?”

“How did you get infected?” Claire asked. Zoe explained how she got infected by testing a modification to her ICE and daemons. Claire laughed. “Give me access to your system.”

“Access granted,” Zoe replied after accepting Claire’s request. “How did this thing get past my firewalls?”

“Let’s see,” Doc Brown said. “Oh, that one is nasty. It’s also corporate malware, so they probably have a deal with Bulwark’s manufacturer to let it through.”

“Why would they do that?”

“Money,” Claire replied. “I see your Bastion didn’t catch it either.”

“No. I’ve never seen that one before,” Zoe admitted. “I’ll correct that though and it won’t slip through Bastion and Bulwark again.”

“If you are able to do that, send me the Bulwark code,” Claire said. “I’ll consider that one of the favors you owe me. I’m sending you the diagnostic data so you can have it to help make changes.”

“Hmm. Ok, thanks,” Zoe replied accepting the data.

“I’m rebooting your Allegro. You’ll be clean once it restarts.”

“Thanks Claire.”

“One more thing. When you get your bike, bring it by. I want to see it in person.”

“Will do. Thanks again and I might be calling you back.”

“You’re welcome,” Doc Brown replied just before the call ended and Zoe’s frame rebooted.

*

“Gotcha,” Zoe said.

“Do you always talk to yourself?” Tommy asked.

“Yeah. I need intelligent conversation, and considering present company…”

“Ha-ha,” Jimmy said.

“Just teasing,” Zoe replied.

“I was actually talking to the malware. My firewall changes caught it this time.”

“That’s good.”

“Do either of you use Bulwark?” Zoe asked. She sent the code update to Doc Brown.

“Nah. Everybody in the family uses Harada Electronics’ Tate,” Tommy answered. He grinned. “It’s corporate management level ICE.”

“That’s good to know,” Zoe said filing away that detail. She would have to look that ICE up later if she remembered to. The car stopped at another light and Zoe turned her attention back to her modified Angel. Zoe dropped her ICE to see what happened.

Five separate malware infected ads immediately swarmed her as did an attack from someone in a neighboring building using a Flood daemon. The modified Angel stopped all six assaults and used Bug Zapper to crash the ads. The Angel used Tag to trace the attacker. It then returned the Flood daemon and followed it up with Caveman, which shut down the attacker’s system.

“Yes!” Zoe shouted.

“Hey, don’t scream in the car,” Jimmy said.

“What’s with the shouting in my ear?” Tommy complained.

“Sorry,” Zoe said.

“Well, don’t do it again,” Tommy grumbled.

“Zoe probably just found a way to replicate some of the corporate level tricks,” Jimmy said shaking his head and smiling.

“If she did, she needs to clue us in,” Tommy replied.

“I don’t know if I did anything like that. I’m excited because my modifications worked like I wanted them too,” Zoe said after seeing the men’s expressions. She sent a Broadcast to the attacker informing them to be more careful in who they attack. She knew they would find the message once they restarted their system.

“I need to change the name of the Angel though. Avenging Angel is nice, but the changes make the daemon even more powerful than it was,” Zoe muttered to herself.

“What’s that?” Jimmy asked.

“Nothing. Just talking to myself again,” Zoe replied. A sudden thought occurred to her. In the Bible the most powerful of God’s servants were a special class. Zoe thought that term was perfect for her customized Angel too. She whispered it out loud, “Archangel.”