"It's the year 3047, Val. We've established interstellar travel, created a virtual simulation that's almost identical to the real life, even figured out immortality. The closest supernatural thing I'll believe is our daemons- and that's daemons with the 'a'." Evelynn stood on the outskirts of an abandoned tower, or 'cursed' tower as her friend kept calling it, tapping her feet impatiently as she waits for her daemons to work their 'magic'. The tower used to be a communication tower with a military base scattered around its base, similarly abandoned, of course. Located on the outskirts of Shindo bay, near a disused nuclear reactor, it makes sense why some spread evil rumors about the tower. The surrounding area had been stigmatized due to the existence of the nuclear reactor, the fact that it was surrounded by a military base, and the modern warfare of the last century wasn't really the most humane war. So there's an abandoned base, stories of inhumane experiment, stigmatized area, and the one that sold the curse story more than anything, no living owner. A property that no one wanted to buy off, in a vast swathe of area no developer wanted to touch, where most cities had been filled to the brim with skyscrapers where some even forgot how the sky looked sounded impossible. Well, no better place for the 'Spectre' to loot then.
"See, you don't believe in the cursed part, but you bite at the 'loot' part. The curse story had been around for more than a few decades, Eve. This 'tip from an unknown source' surfaced last month. Even if there's no actual curse, the chance of it being a trap, or at the very least a tower filled with crackhead, is still quite high." Evelynn's friend, Valerie, spoke through the holo, projected directly onto Eve's iris.
"It's pre-war relic of a building, there's bound to be something worth of value. Plus, if the tip is true, then we could be looking at some legendary daemon here. At the very least, there's authentic military documents. That's bound to net us some alts on the black market."
"Are you sure it's legendary 'daemon' and not 'legendary demon', Eve?"
"I know what I heard."
"Suit yourself. You and your fascination with the pre-war relics. Just know that as soon as I detect anomalies on your vitals, I'm sending in the emergency service on your location, and you're paying for those."
"Fine, I'll keep you posted. You know the access code to Huathe as well. Just don't activate him on unfortunate time." The owl construct on Evelynn's shoulder shudders a bit before settling down, signifying that another user has accessed it. "Also, being surprised is not an anomaly, so don't just call at a drop of a hat."
"I'm not that dumb, Eve. Stay safe." Val waved as the holo shuts off, just in time for Eve's daemon to turn off the security on the outer gate. Even if the area has been abandoned for ages, it still pays to be careful, especially since no one knew anything about what's inside. There's information about what it used to contain, but with more than half a century since its last known occupant, the possibility of someone using it as a secret villain base is not exactly zero. So far, the base acted just like it would, like an outdated piece of history, so old that Eve, the prodigy netrunner, can't just breeze through its technology. Seems like an oxymoron, but without direct connection to the all-encompassing web that is the matrix, Eve can't use most of her up-to-date daemons, as they're not meant to navigate archaic offline systems. So not only that she needs to find a port to jack into physically, she also needs to wait for her AI-learning daemon to figure out the file structures.
With that first hurdle gone, the netrunner took her first step within the compound, and another step closer to the 'cursed' tower. It isn't surprising to find the archaic technology to still have small electricity supplying to keep running, considering the efficiency and durability of solar cells, which makes determining whether or not this compound remains unused much harder. From the looks of it, and from the owl's eyes, it definitely seemed like Eve was the first person to step into the compound in a long while. No signs of life anywhere, judging by the amount of the settled dust and grime, so not even the wildlife had resettled here. It was almost like there's an invisible dome surrounding the compound that unconsciously shooed everything away from entering. Not Eve, of course, who's either too dumb to realize that she's walking into a cursed trap, or too pragmatic to believe in the kind of unscientific bullshit that is the spiritual. She can't deny the reason the curse story had taken such a deep root within the Shindo Bay citizen, though, there's so much unusual phenomenon surrounding the compound that people are bound to spread rumors about it.
After fiddling about and getting the backup generator running so Eve could access the computers, along with access to the areas that isn't powered by the solar cells, lighting up the entire compound with a sickly yellow hue, she sent Huathe to run several daemons at once. One to scour the database of individual computers, other to figure out the network structure, and another to check for any security countermeasure. So far, none of the database, even the main server, contains anything useful. Military schedule, deployment orders, soldier's profile, inventories and shipments manifest, all regular military stuff. No mention of inhumane experiments, information warfare division, or anything that might lead to her treasure, or anything saucy to sell for alts. Two informative things that she found includes the schematic of the whole compound, denoting places where she had to visit later to grab souvenirs, and the fact that she can't find anything about the tower, or access it from the main server. There's a surprisingly complex firewall blocking any access to it, and this firewall somehow proactively seeks to erase any information about the tower. All maps, schematic, photos, and even documents pertaining to address or description about the tower had this blot of corrupted data covering what should be the tower.
"Believe in the curse yet?" Val suddenly spoke into the holo.
"Just some scrubbing AI our ancestor forgot to turn off. All signs point to something being hidden within that tower." Eve calmly replied as she walked towards the ominous tower. A brief scan from the outside using the owl construct reveals nothing new. No signs of life, no incoming or outgoing transmission, nothing that would suggest any kind of activities, supernatural or otherwise. As she approached the communication tower, she started to wonder how did the tip came to be anyway. Did someone come across an old documents pointing towards the communication tower? Was there a transmission coming from the tower that was caught? Maybe she should've heeded Valerie's warning and just backed off, but no, Eve needed this 'heist'. Aside from the potential legendary daemon, the pre-war relics, and the street cred she'd gain, as creepy as the compound felt, it was actually calming for Eve to walk within it. The nature-reclaimed buildings, plant roots causing cracks on the asphalt, and of course, the silence, with only the wind and rustling of leaves, away from the never-sleeping hustle and bustle of the megacity, where one can barely hear their own thoughts. If it wasn't for the rumors, she could probably bring the superstitious Valerie for a date here, yet here she is, alone and on a mission.
"…Okay, that is definitely not normal." Eve spoke to the holo as she watched the tower itself get consumed by the same blot of corrupted data, in real life. Both Huathe's eyes and her own eyes saw the same blot covers the tower, with corrupted patterns adorning the black void giving the appearance of it being covered by a blanket of screaming faces. Eve had to dart back a few steps and gave herself a full body scan for any malware that might infect her cyberware or Huathe, perhaps from the port that she jacked in earlier, but the result came out clean. Someone, or something is affecting her visual implant to make it look like the tower had been scrubbed. "I take it back, this isn't just some scrubbing AI, this is something- Val?" Eve tapped onto her headset, curious why her partner was suddenly silent, and discovered that her connections had been severed. She couldn't access the web, and glancing at Huathe made it clear that her owl was also disconnected from the web, so now Valerie would be blind to the whole situation. That wasn't the scariest part however, the scariest to Eve was her not knowing whether Val had called the emergency service or not.
"Fuck, better make it quick." Eve cursed under her breath, as she gingerly approached the void of corrupted faces, her cybernetic arm in front of her to see if it hits anything solid. There is no 'void that consumes your soul', this is just a data scrubbing, which happened to her eyes implants, so in reality, the tower would still be there. That being said, it still didn't stop Eve's heart from beating harder than usual. This isn't your usual trap, as this is the first instance she had seen an active hack on her visual without prior vector of breaching. Touching the corrupted blot could just be her touching the moss on the tower's exterior, or it could also spread the corruption to her body. It is scientifically impossible, and if it actually happens, then Eve would assume that it's her brain that has been hacked next to think and feel like the corruption is spreading through her hand. "It's all… explainable… by… tech." Eve steeled herself as she inches closer and closer, before she finally touched the moss on the tower's wall. She lets out a nervous chuckle unwittingly, before she engaged her face mask, proceeds to stick to the wall, searching for the entrance, all while the corrupted 'faces' stares at her face mere an inch away to her.
As soon as she found the door and opened it, a bone chilling banshee screams filled her head, causing Eve to bristle and almost fell backward. It was so loud that she could've sworn her eardrums were punctured already, and the scream was so eerie that every strand of hairs on her body stood up for a few seconds. Reflexively, Even stumbled to take off her headset, and to her surprise, the scream stopped as soon as the earpieces were taken off. Another active remote hack, this time on her auditory tech, and if Eve was one of those people who changed their ears to an implant, she might've kept hearing the scream throughout her journey in the tower. The inside of the tower looked normal, just as one would expect from an abandoned communication tower, yet through her and Huathe's now hacked vision, Eve started seeing weird movements throughout the buildings. Weird, transparent, ghastly movements. Of course, now that she knew that it's just her hacked vision, Eve paid those weird movements no mind, as long as they're not triggering anything like a security measure. At least, that's what she told herself to believe.
Jacking Huathe onto a nearby port and running the same daemons as earlier produced the same result: most of the things regarding the tower had been scrubbed, although the tower did have saucier information contained within its PC. Among the usual military stuff, there's a lot of interesting transcripts of communication stored, starting from the usual report, before it gradually became more and more manic and unhinged. Soldiers reporting hallucinations, feeling something crawling in their skins, seeing ghost, hearing screams, faces haunting their dream, all the sorts. The higher ups that were sent to investigate didn't uncover anything useful either, and even fell prey to the hallucinations as well, exacerbating the situation. Before long, orders to evacuate the area was issued, and the reason given was 'hallucinations caused by prolonged exposure to radiation', even when no area survey was ever conducted, and both the tower's and Eve's own Geiger counter not detecting any dangerous level of radiation. One thing that was cleared up was that there were never any 'experiments' done within the compound, as it was supposed to only be a temporary outpost to scout out the Shindo Bay.
The other thing that she found was these sprawling black tendrils in the tower's matrix grid, covering what seems to be the underground server room, indicating to Eve where the source of her trouble, and maybe the treasure, was located. After downloading the complete transcript and other files onto Huathe, and jamming the door open so she won't get trapped in, Eve took a deep breath, reminded herself that it's all an active hack, and trudged on. Things didn't get better once she got deeper inside either, with the lights being broken ages ago, Eve had to rely on her hacked night vision to proceed. Turning on the NV mode only caused the ghastly movements she saw earlier to be that much more distinct, which in turn made Eve jumpier than well. Not because she's scared of the 'ghost', but because she had to make sure that the movement is just her hacked vision, and not someone sneaking to stab her in the back. That's another thing that she had proven as well, that there's no crackhead within this tower, only herself, and the source of all these active hacks.
The 'phenomenon' did not stop there, with Eve hearing doors and electronics suddenly making noises in the distance, loud crashing noise of what she assumes to be something falling, hums from a chorus of old disk drives creating a creepy distorted low wails, all the stuff that might unnerve someone. Even Eve was slightly unnerved at the sounds combined with the things she saw under her NV. Things then escalate further, with her cybernetic arm feeling both phantom pains and things crawling on that phantom limb, which Eve brushed off as the, thing, hacking her sensory implants now, which is why she only felt the crawling on areas that she had implants on. Huathe started acting weird, spinning its head and twitching, a literal chill running down her spine as the thing hacked onto the cooling protocol on her spine processor, eerie vibration to her bone, to weirdly fragrant smell filling up her nose. The most unnerving of the 'hack', was Eve started hearing her own voice echoing into the void, sounding like corrupted garble, wails, pained scream to unsettling cackling. It was so real and unmistakably hers, that Eve doubted herself for a few moments, before realizing that her voice changer was hacked this time.
Eve turned off those modules as soon as she discovered which part of her cybernetics was hacked, but the uneasiness still hangs in the air. Then, finally, Eve arrived at her target, the main server, which aside from the ghastly transparent thing floating around, looked fairly normal. As her previous attempt at breaking the firewall, first from the compound, then on the first floor of the tower, failed, Eve had to flex her old hacking muscle to manually hack the mainframe just so she could breach it. It took several daemons to parse out the information and translate it into something Eve could hack, a lot of processing power that her spine got hot almost to a point of scalding, and some painfully slow and silent minutes until Eve finally cracked the security. Jacking in to get her daemons to scour for any useful stuff, and hopefully turn off this annoying active hacks, Eve found that there's one folder, nested deep within the server and surrounded by lesser security measure. With the treasure in her eyes, Eve laser focused on the folder and hacked away, until…
"WHERE THE FUCK WERE YOU?! YOU WERE GONE FOR LIKE, ALMOST AN HOUR WITHOUT ANY NOTIFICATION!! DO YOU EVEN HAVE ANY IDEA HOW WORRIED I AM???" Val's desperate and worried voice ringed out through her earpiece so loud that Eve could hear her without fully putting it on.
"Geez, sorry Val. The daemon cuts off all incoming and outgoing transmission. Didn't even know that it was the case until it was too late. Thanks for not calling the emergency services, though."
"I did. None of them wanted to send anything to that haunted area because they've had too many prank calls in the past. A-Anyway, did you get the daemon?"
"Yeah, codenamed Blackout. It's definitely a nasty piece of software, capable of actively hacking onto one's cyberware and messing with their 'reality'. It's AI produced apparently, the developer programmed it to learn to scrub sensitive information and bar anyone from accessing it, tested it on the tower, and it went haywire, learning all kinds of stuff, among which includes horror stories and creepypastas. Seems like either the developer forgot to turn it off, something got to them first, or it is working as they intended. As soon as I removed the daemon from the main server, all the hacks onto my cybernetics stopped, and I was able to leave safely with the daemon and the files, along with some souvenirs. I can definitely repurpose this daemon for stealth mission, 'scrubbing off' my presence from the guards' eyes, or just to cause mass panic. Told you it's legendary 'daemon' and not 'demon'."
"Huh, color me surprised. Guess it wasn't cursed after all."
"…About that. In some way, it is cursed."
"What? Did I hear that right? Eve admits that something is cursed?"
"Yeah. I had to scrub those data off the servers. I will also need to scrub the memories from my brain, if it's even possible, maybe with an unhealthy amount of whisky."
"…Oh, it's that kind of 'cursed', huh?"
"It won't be too far-fetched to assume that it's the developer's personal stash. Christ, just be glad you weren't on Huathe when I uncovered that unholy level of degeneracy."
"At least you're out in one piece. Hurry home you dolt." Val's transmission ended there, leaving Eve alone again on her motorbike on the road home, with tons of pre-war relic in her back, a new daemon in her cyberdeck, and a permanent scar on her memory. Eve could still scarcely believe that someone that degenerate could exist as she's still haven't recovered from the sickening videos and images she had to see. At least those files had been purged forever, and no other being should witness those unholy mess. And thus ends the curse of the ominous tower, singlehandedly dispelled by one brave, and maybe slightly reckless, netrunner. Turns out it was just some unnecessarily elaborate security system to hide one's private wanking stash. 'Cursed' indeed.
Or at least, that's what she assumed to be the case. There's no way an AI could fabricate all those files and backstory to trick someone into carrying it back to the global net, right?
"See, you don't believe in the cursed part, but you bite at the 'loot' part. The curse story had been around for more than a few decades, Eve. This 'tip from an unknown source' surfaced last month. Even if there's no actual curse, the chance of it being a trap, or at the very least a tower filled with crackhead, is still quite high." Evelynn's friend, Valerie, spoke through the holo, projected directly onto Eve's iris.
"It's pre-war relic of a building, there's bound to be something worth of value. Plus, if the tip is true, then we could be looking at some legendary daemon here. At the very least, there's authentic military documents. That's bound to net us some alts on the black market."
"Are you sure it's legendary 'daemon' and not 'legendary demon', Eve?"
"I know what I heard."
"Suit yourself. You and your fascination with the pre-war relics. Just know that as soon as I detect anomalies on your vitals, I'm sending in the emergency service on your location, and you're paying for those."
"Fine, I'll keep you posted. You know the access code to Huathe as well. Just don't activate him on unfortunate time." The owl construct on Evelynn's shoulder shudders a bit before settling down, signifying that another user has accessed it. "Also, being surprised is not an anomaly, so don't just call at a drop of a hat."
"I'm not that dumb, Eve. Stay safe." Val waved as the holo shuts off, just in time for Eve's daemon to turn off the security on the outer gate. Even if the area has been abandoned for ages, it still pays to be careful, especially since no one knew anything about what's inside. There's information about what it used to contain, but with more than half a century since its last known occupant, the possibility of someone using it as a secret villain base is not exactly zero. So far, the base acted just like it would, like an outdated piece of history, so old that Eve, the prodigy netrunner, can't just breeze through its technology. Seems like an oxymoron, but without direct connection to the all-encompassing web that is the matrix, Eve can't use most of her up-to-date daemons, as they're not meant to navigate archaic offline systems. So not only that she needs to find a port to jack into physically, she also needs to wait for her AI-learning daemon to figure out the file structures.
With that first hurdle gone, the netrunner took her first step within the compound, and another step closer to the 'cursed' tower. It isn't surprising to find the archaic technology to still have small electricity supplying to keep running, considering the efficiency and durability of solar cells, which makes determining whether or not this compound remains unused much harder. From the looks of it, and from the owl's eyes, it definitely seemed like Eve was the first person to step into the compound in a long while. No signs of life anywhere, judging by the amount of the settled dust and grime, so not even the wildlife had resettled here. It was almost like there's an invisible dome surrounding the compound that unconsciously shooed everything away from entering. Not Eve, of course, who's either too dumb to realize that she's walking into a cursed trap, or too pragmatic to believe in the kind of unscientific bullshit that is the spiritual. She can't deny the reason the curse story had taken such a deep root within the Shindo Bay citizen, though, there's so much unusual phenomenon surrounding the compound that people are bound to spread rumors about it.
After fiddling about and getting the backup generator running so Eve could access the computers, along with access to the areas that isn't powered by the solar cells, lighting up the entire compound with a sickly yellow hue, she sent Huathe to run several daemons at once. One to scour the database of individual computers, other to figure out the network structure, and another to check for any security countermeasure. So far, none of the database, even the main server, contains anything useful. Military schedule, deployment orders, soldier's profile, inventories and shipments manifest, all regular military stuff. No mention of inhumane experiments, information warfare division, or anything that might lead to her treasure, or anything saucy to sell for alts. Two informative things that she found includes the schematic of the whole compound, denoting places where she had to visit later to grab souvenirs, and the fact that she can't find anything about the tower, or access it from the main server. There's a surprisingly complex firewall blocking any access to it, and this firewall somehow proactively seeks to erase any information about the tower. All maps, schematic, photos, and even documents pertaining to address or description about the tower had this blot of corrupted data covering what should be the tower.
"Believe in the curse yet?" Val suddenly spoke into the holo.
"Just some scrubbing AI our ancestor forgot to turn off. All signs point to something being hidden within that tower." Eve calmly replied as she walked towards the ominous tower. A brief scan from the outside using the owl construct reveals nothing new. No signs of life, no incoming or outgoing transmission, nothing that would suggest any kind of activities, supernatural or otherwise. As she approached the communication tower, she started to wonder how did the tip came to be anyway. Did someone come across an old documents pointing towards the communication tower? Was there a transmission coming from the tower that was caught? Maybe she should've heeded Valerie's warning and just backed off, but no, Eve needed this 'heist'. Aside from the potential legendary daemon, the pre-war relics, and the street cred she'd gain, as creepy as the compound felt, it was actually calming for Eve to walk within it. The nature-reclaimed buildings, plant roots causing cracks on the asphalt, and of course, the silence, with only the wind and rustling of leaves, away from the never-sleeping hustle and bustle of the megacity, where one can barely hear their own thoughts. If it wasn't for the rumors, she could probably bring the superstitious Valerie for a date here, yet here she is, alone and on a mission.
"…Okay, that is definitely not normal." Eve spoke to the holo as she watched the tower itself get consumed by the same blot of corrupted data, in real life. Both Huathe's eyes and her own eyes saw the same blot covers the tower, with corrupted patterns adorning the black void giving the appearance of it being covered by a blanket of screaming faces. Eve had to dart back a few steps and gave herself a full body scan for any malware that might infect her cyberware or Huathe, perhaps from the port that she jacked in earlier, but the result came out clean. Someone, or something is affecting her visual implant to make it look like the tower had been scrubbed. "I take it back, this isn't just some scrubbing AI, this is something- Val?" Eve tapped onto her headset, curious why her partner was suddenly silent, and discovered that her connections had been severed. She couldn't access the web, and glancing at Huathe made it clear that her owl was also disconnected from the web, so now Valerie would be blind to the whole situation. That wasn't the scariest part however, the scariest to Eve was her not knowing whether Val had called the emergency service or not.
"Fuck, better make it quick." Eve cursed under her breath, as she gingerly approached the void of corrupted faces, her cybernetic arm in front of her to see if it hits anything solid. There is no 'void that consumes your soul', this is just a data scrubbing, which happened to her eyes implants, so in reality, the tower would still be there. That being said, it still didn't stop Eve's heart from beating harder than usual. This isn't your usual trap, as this is the first instance she had seen an active hack on her visual without prior vector of breaching. Touching the corrupted blot could just be her touching the moss on the tower's exterior, or it could also spread the corruption to her body. It is scientifically impossible, and if it actually happens, then Eve would assume that it's her brain that has been hacked next to think and feel like the corruption is spreading through her hand. "It's all… explainable… by… tech." Eve steeled herself as she inches closer and closer, before she finally touched the moss on the tower's wall. She lets out a nervous chuckle unwittingly, before she engaged her face mask, proceeds to stick to the wall, searching for the entrance, all while the corrupted 'faces' stares at her face mere an inch away to her.
As soon as she found the door and opened it, a bone chilling banshee screams filled her head, causing Eve to bristle and almost fell backward. It was so loud that she could've sworn her eardrums were punctured already, and the scream was so eerie that every strand of hairs on her body stood up for a few seconds. Reflexively, Even stumbled to take off her headset, and to her surprise, the scream stopped as soon as the earpieces were taken off. Another active remote hack, this time on her auditory tech, and if Eve was one of those people who changed their ears to an implant, she might've kept hearing the scream throughout her journey in the tower. The inside of the tower looked normal, just as one would expect from an abandoned communication tower, yet through her and Huathe's now hacked vision, Eve started seeing weird movements throughout the buildings. Weird, transparent, ghastly movements. Of course, now that she knew that it's just her hacked vision, Eve paid those weird movements no mind, as long as they're not triggering anything like a security measure. At least, that's what she told herself to believe.
Jacking Huathe onto a nearby port and running the same daemons as earlier produced the same result: most of the things regarding the tower had been scrubbed, although the tower did have saucier information contained within its PC. Among the usual military stuff, there's a lot of interesting transcripts of communication stored, starting from the usual report, before it gradually became more and more manic and unhinged. Soldiers reporting hallucinations, feeling something crawling in their skins, seeing ghost, hearing screams, faces haunting their dream, all the sorts. The higher ups that were sent to investigate didn't uncover anything useful either, and even fell prey to the hallucinations as well, exacerbating the situation. Before long, orders to evacuate the area was issued, and the reason given was 'hallucinations caused by prolonged exposure to radiation', even when no area survey was ever conducted, and both the tower's and Eve's own Geiger counter not detecting any dangerous level of radiation. One thing that was cleared up was that there were never any 'experiments' done within the compound, as it was supposed to only be a temporary outpost to scout out the Shindo Bay.
The other thing that she found was these sprawling black tendrils in the tower's matrix grid, covering what seems to be the underground server room, indicating to Eve where the source of her trouble, and maybe the treasure, was located. After downloading the complete transcript and other files onto Huathe, and jamming the door open so she won't get trapped in, Eve took a deep breath, reminded herself that it's all an active hack, and trudged on. Things didn't get better once she got deeper inside either, with the lights being broken ages ago, Eve had to rely on her hacked night vision to proceed. Turning on the NV mode only caused the ghastly movements she saw earlier to be that much more distinct, which in turn made Eve jumpier than well. Not because she's scared of the 'ghost', but because she had to make sure that the movement is just her hacked vision, and not someone sneaking to stab her in the back. That's another thing that she had proven as well, that there's no crackhead within this tower, only herself, and the source of all these active hacks.
The 'phenomenon' did not stop there, with Eve hearing doors and electronics suddenly making noises in the distance, loud crashing noise of what she assumes to be something falling, hums from a chorus of old disk drives creating a creepy distorted low wails, all the stuff that might unnerve someone. Even Eve was slightly unnerved at the sounds combined with the things she saw under her NV. Things then escalate further, with her cybernetic arm feeling both phantom pains and things crawling on that phantom limb, which Eve brushed off as the, thing, hacking her sensory implants now, which is why she only felt the crawling on areas that she had implants on. Huathe started acting weird, spinning its head and twitching, a literal chill running down her spine as the thing hacked onto the cooling protocol on her spine processor, eerie vibration to her bone, to weirdly fragrant smell filling up her nose. The most unnerving of the 'hack', was Eve started hearing her own voice echoing into the void, sounding like corrupted garble, wails, pained scream to unsettling cackling. It was so real and unmistakably hers, that Eve doubted herself for a few moments, before realizing that her voice changer was hacked this time.
Eve turned off those modules as soon as she discovered which part of her cybernetics was hacked, but the uneasiness still hangs in the air. Then, finally, Eve arrived at her target, the main server, which aside from the ghastly transparent thing floating around, looked fairly normal. As her previous attempt at breaking the firewall, first from the compound, then on the first floor of the tower, failed, Eve had to flex her old hacking muscle to manually hack the mainframe just so she could breach it. It took several daemons to parse out the information and translate it into something Eve could hack, a lot of processing power that her spine got hot almost to a point of scalding, and some painfully slow and silent minutes until Eve finally cracked the security. Jacking in to get her daemons to scour for any useful stuff, and hopefully turn off this annoying active hacks, Eve found that there's one folder, nested deep within the server and surrounded by lesser security measure. With the treasure in her eyes, Eve laser focused on the folder and hacked away, until…
"WHERE THE FUCK WERE YOU?! YOU WERE GONE FOR LIKE, ALMOST AN HOUR WITHOUT ANY NOTIFICATION!! DO YOU EVEN HAVE ANY IDEA HOW WORRIED I AM???" Val's desperate and worried voice ringed out through her earpiece so loud that Eve could hear her without fully putting it on.
"Geez, sorry Val. The daemon cuts off all incoming and outgoing transmission. Didn't even know that it was the case until it was too late. Thanks for not calling the emergency services, though."
"I did. None of them wanted to send anything to that haunted area because they've had too many prank calls in the past. A-Anyway, did you get the daemon?"
"Yeah, codenamed Blackout. It's definitely a nasty piece of software, capable of actively hacking onto one's cyberware and messing with their 'reality'. It's AI produced apparently, the developer programmed it to learn to scrub sensitive information and bar anyone from accessing it, tested it on the tower, and it went haywire, learning all kinds of stuff, among which includes horror stories and creepypastas. Seems like either the developer forgot to turn it off, something got to them first, or it is working as they intended. As soon as I removed the daemon from the main server, all the hacks onto my cybernetics stopped, and I was able to leave safely with the daemon and the files, along with some souvenirs. I can definitely repurpose this daemon for stealth mission, 'scrubbing off' my presence from the guards' eyes, or just to cause mass panic. Told you it's legendary 'daemon' and not 'demon'."
"Huh, color me surprised. Guess it wasn't cursed after all."
"…About that. In some way, it is cursed."
"What? Did I hear that right? Eve admits that something is cursed?"
"Yeah. I had to scrub those data off the servers. I will also need to scrub the memories from my brain, if it's even possible, maybe with an unhealthy amount of whisky."
"…Oh, it's that kind of 'cursed', huh?"
"It won't be too far-fetched to assume that it's the developer's personal stash. Christ, just be glad you weren't on Huathe when I uncovered that unholy level of degeneracy."
"At least you're out in one piece. Hurry home you dolt." Val's transmission ended there, leaving Eve alone again on her motorbike on the road home, with tons of pre-war relic in her back, a new daemon in her cyberdeck, and a permanent scar on her memory. Eve could still scarcely believe that someone that degenerate could exist as she's still haven't recovered from the sickening videos and images she had to see. At least those files had been purged forever, and no other being should witness those unholy mess. And thus ends the curse of the ominous tower, singlehandedly dispelled by one brave, and maybe slightly reckless, netrunner. Turns out it was just some unnecessarily elaborate security system to hide one's private wanking stash. 'Cursed' indeed.
Or at least, that's what she assumed to be the case. There's no way an AI could fabricate all those files and backstory to trick someone into carrying it back to the global net, right?