--- The Eternal Lost Lurker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Ah well. A few extra newlines aren't going to kill anybody :P
She had killed countless numbers with newlines, and now a newline was
going to trigger her demise.
Solena, the pokemon hacker hitwoman. That was all she was ever
referred to as. Such an undignified title, reveling in the many lives
she had taken. It took work to hack into the network used to transmit
pokeballs and their contents from one place to another. She could have
cracked bank security for a living, or altered voting records. But no,
all the glory was in pokemon, so that was where she applied her talents
in the employ of this or that criminal organization.
Her trademark trick was to intercept a pokeball, as its energy
traveled along the wires, and alter its pattern subtly. For this she
usually used a text editor. Months of trial and error had given her
a general feel for which pieces of text corresponded to which pieces of
her prey. Given the delicate balance of life, almost any clumsy edit
to vital areas would inevitably prove fatal. A few newlines in a
certain spot, and when the pokemon rematerialized, its heart would stop
beating, leaving the trainer to watch his or her friend die - slow
enough to anguish over, fast enough that there was no way to stop it,
not even returning to the ball once the trainer realized what was
happening.
She was most often employed to send a message to certain trainers -
ones experienced enough to become a nuisance to her employers at the
time, and to have more than the six pokemon allowed, such that the
trainer changed squads often enough to give her a chance to strike.
More than once, she had been asked to hack pokeballs themselves - but
there was nothing to hack: few of them had anything remotely resembling
a computer that could be compromised in the first place, and of those,
she had yet to see one that allowed for remote access. So her windows
of opportunity remained confined to the networks. That was usually
okay: even one kill, after weeks of waiting, was enough to unnerve her
victims.
Woe be to her victims who, rather than arrange for a storage facility
where the unused pokemon could at least run along and play outside when
not with the trainer, sought to save money by consigning their extra
pokemon to rot as pure energy in some box they usually never even
bothered to visit. She took particular delight in relieving such
heartless trainers of their squads. Using her same signature each time
meant she could easily undo the changes, if the trainer paid whatever
ransom her employers set. Most did not. More than one had broken down
upon realizing the trainer's friends were consigned to a living hell,
condemned if they ever again returned to their natural form.
Eventually, she had apparently crossed a line. One of her past victims
must have discovered her identity, tracked her down, and abducted her
while she slept. Solena was not the most physically fit, and the ropes
she awoke to find binding her were securely tied, rendering escape
impossible. She was bound to a crucifix-shaped table, above which a
bed of spikes dangled. A motorized latch to one side was all that
supported the bed, sparing her a messy death. It was connected to a
computer, on which a single line of text was displayed:
CONFIRM RELEASE LATCH (Y/N)? Y_
The good news was that her hand was within reach of the keyboard. The
bad news was that all the keys had been removed, and their switches
busted, save the Enter key. She suspected the bed of nails could be
retracted and secured if given the proper commands, although she was
unable to see the mechanical connections that would entail from her
vantage point.
Several thoughts raced through her mind. She could do nothing, and
wait to see if her friends would come to her rescue - no, she had no
true friends, only employers and the occasional coworker, as her life's
work was almost always solo. She could stay there until she starved to
death - no, not appealing. She could try to wriggle free of the ropes
until she bled - not appealing, and she had already tested the ropes'
strength. Or she could take the coward's way out, and go through with
the death trap.
A smile came to her face as she realized, in her heart, she had always
been a coward, and her release from life would hurt no one else. Then
another thought came as her finger reached out and twitched - she had
never smiled, truly smiled, since her first contract hit all those
years ago.
Then there was nothing left to think further thoughts.
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