Chapter 2 - The heart of a rebel

Chapter 2 - the heart of a rebel

"What choice does the streets give you?" 

Gloria remembers her mother's words everyday. She uses them as a reminder to never accept this kind of fate. 

She never knew her father, her mother wasn't the most respectable person in the city but at least she took care of Gloria the best she could. 

Gloria quickly learnt that if you are born with nothing you will struggle all your life, just like her mom did. 

In her childhood her mom was renting a small apartment in the commons, faraway from the corporate districts. During the day, her mom would receive "friends" at home and was asking Gloria to go play outside every time. 

She understood pretty quickly what was happening and was determined to never follow this path. 

The neighborhood was composed of several blocks of apartment complexes surrounding a small park, squarish gray masses blocking the sky view. 

The streets were full of vendors and it was very active at any time of the day or the night. You can find anything in the commons, from legal shops to more shady businesses held by gangs. 

That's the environment Gloria grew up in, an unfair and hostile life. 

When she was a teenager, she started to mingle with the "wrong" kind of kids. There were so many children like her, she had no problem to belong. 

At 14 years old, she was often getting in trouble and was known by the NPPD.

One day she got her hands on some black market consoles that could connect to networks. She showed them to the other kids, they were so impressed that Gloria gained popularity instantly. 

That same year, she created her group, a band of few kids around her age. She came up with the name BinaryGhosts and her life of small crimes really started. 

A teenage boy is posted at the corner of a street and an alley, he looks nervous. The buildings are the regular gray color of the commons. 

He turns inside the alley to join Gloria who is tinkering with a small console connected to the building ventilation system. 

"Hurry up, Gloria. We might be caught anytime!" he says to her in a low voice. 

"Relax! And shut up!" she shouts at him. 

The boy looks even more nervous, as if Gloria shouting at him will attract attention. But nobody seems to care in the main street and the alley is deserted. 

Suddenly, a big smile appears on Gloria's face. 

"Shit… I'm in!" she says with excitement. 

"For real?" the boy asks as he checks the screen on the console. 

Gloria says nothing and shows him the screen proudly. She managed to hack through the ventilation system and gained access to the entire building's network. 

"It's all ours, call the others." She commands the boy. 

Without hesitation he runs out of sight. Gloria checks the screen one more time. It's not the first time she hacks, but this one is definitely harder than anything she has done before. She feels a sense of pride. 

A few minutes later a bunch of kids wearing hoods and backpacks arrive running to Gloria. She opens a big ventilation exhaust from the wall and gets back to her small console. 

She types on the console a few commands and the fans of the ventilation system stop working. The kids start to enter the ventilation system one by one. 

"Hurry up, you guys, I don't know how long before I'm kicked out of the system." She says while pushing them through the vent. 

The last kid enters the vent and she closes it behind him. She keeps her eyes locked on the screen of her console. 

Gloria feels the adrenaline pumping in her body. She checks all the entry points of the network but everything is dead quiet. 

"Damn, if a netrunner connects, I will be toast…" She thinks to herself. It only adds more to her excitement and minutes start to feel like hours. 

After 15 minutes the first kid comes out of the vent looking very excited. 

"Quickly! Show me!" She commands. 

The kid quickly opens his backpack, it's full of electronic devices. Gloria looks very happy. 

"I knew it! It's a bloody warehouse!" she says. 

A few other kids come out of the vent with their backpacks full as well. 

"Run to our safe house!" She shouts as she pushes them to move. 

The kids start to run and separate when they reach the main street. Gloria stays to wait for the last kids to come out of the warehouse. 

She jumps every time she hears an unexpected noise but it always turns out to be nothing. 

The last kid finally comes out with as much loot as the others. Gloria starts typing on her console frantically and the ventilation of the building restarts.

She quickly disconnects and starts running with the last kid. 

After a few minutes they reach the small park surrounded by the neighborhood buildings where they all live. 

Along the sides of the park there are some trees and plants that give the feeling of a ridiculously tiny forest. 

Gloria and the kid run toward it and inside are welcomed by the others sitting in a circle with their backpacks in the middle. 

The plants barely give them enough cover, but the usual people walking in the park don't care about them. 

Gloria quickly goes through the backpacks, checking their contents. She looks very satisfied. 

"We have to bring everything to Marcus! He will give us a good price." She says. 

The kids nod and close their backpacks, they wait for Gloria to take the lead. She starts walking out of the tiny forest with the other kids following her. 

They leave the park and walk a few blocks until they arrive at a street with more activity. Street vendors with carts are selling all sorts of stuff, from cheap food to meds and techs. 

They walk past the street vendors to reach a big alley with all sorts of shops. One of the shops has a neon sign saying "Marcus buys and sells everything." That's Marcus' shop. 

Gloria leads the way and they all enter the shop. It's small with a big window on the wall and an old speaker. 

"Gloria?" the speaker shouts with a mix of static noise. 

"Hello, Marcus. I have stuff to sell." She says confidently, close to the speaker. 

"Back off!" the voice in the speaker says. 

She takes a step back and a brief buzzing sound can be heard. The glass wall suddenly slides upward revealing a small room with a metal door. 

Gloria confidently enters the room and the other kids follow. The glass wall slowly goes back down and the metal door slides open by itself. 

The kids follow her through the door. It's a bigger room with low lighting and several shelves against the walls and in the middle of the room.

There's a huge desk against the back wall with a big man sitting on an office chair. 

"You brought your gang! You guys don't plan anything funny?" he says then starts laughing. 

"You are funny!" Gloria says. 

"How's your mom?" Marcus asks. 

"I have stuff to sell, can we stop the chit chat?" She says with a serious tone. 

"When did you start acting like a badass?" He says as he stands up from his chair and walks toward them. 

Marcus is a huge guy with cyber optics instead of his natural eyes, it gives him an impressive look. 

Gloria gives signs to the other kids and they bring their backpacks in front of Marcus. 

"So, you do have goods." he says as he quickly scans through the backpacks. 

"These are old techs…" He says. 

"How much is it worth?" She asks. 

"How much more can you bring me?" He asks back. 

"Maybe ten times more, so how much?" She insists. 

Marcus keeps scanning the contents of the backpacks, his optics doing circular movements and the lenses can be seen zooming in and out. 

"Hmmm, I could use these for parts, no markings. Where did you find these?" He asks. 

"I can't tell, you buy or not?" She asks calmly. 

He nods, walks back to his desk, grabs a chip and inserts it in a slot behind his ear. There's a small light that starts blinking in one of his optics, then he takes the chip off the slot. 

"Bring this to the ripperdoc next door and he will hook you up." He says as he gives her the chip. 

Gloria nods and smiles, she leads her group outside of Marcus' shop and they wait outside while she enters the ripperdoc's shop. 

A skinny man with metallic arms and a visor on his eyes is sitting behind a counter. 

The room is small and there's a door next to the counter. Gloria puts the chip on the counter. 

The ripperdoc looks at her from head to toe. 

"What do you want, kid?" He asks. 

"Marcus sends me." She says. 

"hmmm." He checks her out again and grabs the chip. He slots it in behind his ear. 

After a few seconds, he checks Gloria again. 

"Cyberdeck, hum?" he asks. 

Gloria nods and smiles. 

The ripperdoc opens the door and invites her in. She eagerly enters. 

There's a clinical long chair in the middle of the room and shelves on every walls with lots of medical techs. 

It's the first time Gloria sees this types of rooms but she seems to know very well what she is getting into. 

The doc commands her to sit on the chair and she obeys without questions. 

He sits on a wheeled chair next to her and starts to examine her head. 

"I will inject you with a small anesthetic, so you won't be feeling anything." He says as he prepares a gun with liquid in a tube on top of it. 

Gloria stays still as he injects it in her neck. 

The doc moves a circular machine from behind the chair and places it on her head. After a few adjustments, it fits perfectly and keeps her head still. 

He grabs a small plate with slots and led lights on it, he places it inside the machine and turns toward a small screen on the side of the chair. 

"All right, I'm ready to start, are you OK?" he asks the girl. 

"Yes." She says calmly. 

He nods and starts to tap on the screen. The machine is doing circular movements around Gloria's head but the girl stays still. 

The machine is pushing small needles directly through Gloria's skull and into her brain. The process is completely painless. 

The needles are linking microscopic wires to the cyberdeck and then the machine proceeds to implant it behind her ear. 

The process is fast and Gloria feels nothing at all. 

The doc grabs a small box on one of the shelves and puts it on a small table connected to the chair. 

"OK, the cyberdeck is done, now you will need these small optics to get the visual feedback. Don't close your eyes." he says to her. 

Gloria keeps her eyes wide open. The doc opens the small box and inside there are two small lenses. His metallic finger splits in two and sticks the lenses on them. 

"Now don't move." He says as he brings the lenses over her eyes. In one swift movement, the lenses are put on her eyes. 

"Close your eyes." he commands her. 

She closes her eyes as he taps on the screen again. Suddenly an UI appears in Gloria's vision, even with her eyes closed. 

"Get familiar with it, it's a simplistic one, you can change your optics in the future if you have money for them." he says. 

She nods and starts browsing the UI with her mind, it's simplistic but she can make calls, receive and send money, get shards and connect to networks. 

She is very excited about the world of possibilities that just opened to her, she feels like she just took her first step into the real world.

She opens her eyes and sees the UI overlapping with her new vision of the world. 

"You are all set. Whatever you did for Marcus to earn these, be careful, Netrunning is dangerous." he says as he starts cleaning up. 

Gloria nods and stands up from the chair. 

She waves at the doc and heads out. 

Outside the other kids are waiting for her and look excited to see her out, they make a circle around her. 

She proudly shows her new optics and they all stare at her in awe. 

The next week, they spent it looting that warehouse again but this time, Gloria hacked in with more ease than with her console. 

They looted so much that they could afford renting a small apartment and few kids from the group got similar cyberdecks. 

BinaryGhosts was leveling up their games, for better or worse.