Played by Seana "Pixie" Harned
It's Wednesday. Aunt Lissa wakes up every morning at 4:30. It must be the farm kid in her. Kyran tries to wake around the same time, but today rolls out of bed closer to 5. Aunt Lissa calls a cheery goodmorning (!) from the kitchen which Kyran answers with a goodnatured grunt as she continues on her way to the shower. Lissa has such a gentle and happy personality that Kyran has found it is quite impossible to snap at her no matter how dark her mood. Kyran is struck by the routine of their lives, and takes comfort in the mundane. She eats with her aunt, then goes back to her room for morning exercizes. Her bed is one of those thin day-bed jobs that you can convert into a couch. It isn't particularly well made (that blankets were just pulled up a little bit) but Kyran isn't going to worry about it. Her room is kept meticulously neat; with bed and desk against the east wall and two packed bookshelves against the north wall next to her desk for easy access, and a low shelf on the south wall next to her bed for the books she's reading currently or expects to get to soon. A set of green floor mats lean against the tall bookshelves and Kyran arranges these on thefloor. She puts Tori Amos' Bee Sides into her boombox and practices floor exerxcizes and her routing for the next competition for a full hour. Fully dressed and ready for the day of school, Kyran still had a full hour to kill and a few people to get back to online. The address she'd set up for generally shitty mass mailings didn't seem to have much doing there, nor did the two she'd set up to monitor her stocks. A couple more of her mirrors had been bombed, but she could always make more. There was something interesting in one of the hacker boxes, though. It was directed specifically to her, but the Nik led nowhere. She thought she recognized this MO as Blayde's, but she wasn't sure.
-----Got something big. I don't know if I'm caught yet, but I want to share it qick. Meet me there before eight. I need YOU, Kyran Trask. You better show:)------
As far as Kyran knew, she hadn't put her name out on the net since she was
a very small child. All of the literature the net should have on her was
the name Elysa Power, age 27. Kyran headed off the place Blayde was most
likely to mean, setting up as much security and as many trapsas she could
think of in case he turned on her. Blayde tended to want to talk in a
java talker called Witches Mark. Kyran looked around the room as she
entered (SilverDragon as usual)and was disappointed for a moment. There
was no Blayde, but there was an incredibly obvious anagram double for him Aldeyb.
[private to Aldeyb] You seek the Dragon?
Aldeyb disappeared into a room marked Rowan. Kyran followed him.
There were only the two of them there.
[private to Silver Dragon] You caught me faster than I thought.
[private to Aldeyb] You'd better believe it. What's going on?
[private to SilverDragon] There is some serious shit going down, you
remember CaptinMarvelous?
[private to Aldeyb] Yeah, sure.
[private to SilverDragon] I just found out that he got iced.
[private to Aldeyb] What was he trying to hack into? What
[private to SilverDragon] No, I mean iced in the real world. He's dead.
[private to Aldeyb] What?
[private to SilverDragon] Dead, Kyran. Dead as a door-nail. Someone
broke into his home and filled him full of holes.
[private to Aldeyb] Where are you getting the name Kyran?
[private to SilverDragon] From you. You are Kryan Trask. Look, I can't
hang out at the terminal much longer, I need you to see what you can find
on and get back to me. I'm at: love_gnael@filin.halls_of_progess.org
Can't stay here. I'm a friend - L8R
And then, he was gone. Kyran sat dumb-founded for a few moments, blinking. CaptinMarvelous has been a good friend of her's. He was one of the more paranoid people she had ever met, but he had seemed to warm up to her. He had always talked about government secrecy and plots to sell the U.S. to the Russians, the whole "New World Order" kinda thing. Sometimes he'd almost start to make sense. But now he was dead? And who was love gnael, anyway?
Kyran glanced at the clock. She still had a while before school started.
She took a deep breath and began searching out CaptainMarvelous, the real
CaptainMarvelous. It is generally concidered bad hacker ettiquite to
track someone's identity, but there are ways to do it. She found a few
possibles and crossreferenced them with local and national and worldwide
news multiple gunshot victims in the last three or so weeks. Blayde
hadn't given her much to work with, but she thought she was probably
pretty close when she had to leave for school. Through her classes, she
scribbled possibilities in her notebook, and went over in her mind every
conversation she could remember having with CM. It was really depressing
to think he was dead. She figured that he was really most likely an
american, since a lot of his theories involved the US governnment, and he
used Wyoming as a swear word several times. She threw out four of the
possible matches in her mind, and for the first time was pleased that it
was wednesday and she didn't have gymnastics practice after school.
at 3:26 she was back in her chair in front of her computer, and the trace
was on again. She had him, maybe. She called up the article she found
"Man shot dead in home." It was a man named Chris Thompston from Gyles,
Colorado. The article said that appearantly nothing was taken from his
home, but his computers were shot up almost as much as he was. Kyran sent
everyting she had found off to the address Blayed had given her along with
an offer to see if she could get someone out there searching. She knew a
guy in southern Montana that would love to check this out.
From: love_gnael@filin@halls_of_progress.org
Subj: READ THIS NOW!
Kyran, you need to check this out.
:From: BodyCast@lostcity.com "BoDyCaSsT"
:Subj: Guess What I found...
:
:Yep, LoveNail, [CaptainMarvelouss] was dead dead dead. Checked the
:police report. Seems he was hyped up on a lot of drugs when he died,
:hat and his room was a messs. Seems someone what looking for
:something.
:So, I checked that out. Sseems that he had been working on a program
:designed to track drug related activities on the net, fucking psycho,
:there was no way he'd get access to the kind of machines needed to do
:that kind of intenssive ssearch.
:
:Anything else? Why yess, I know for a fact that [CaptainMarvelous]
:had been hacking government facilities, including the FBI. Maybe he
:was right about the government, either that or he made his fears come
:true.
:
: _________
: / \ / \
: | ^ |
: \___ O ___/
: III
: IIIIIIIII
: IIIIIIIIIII
: IBoDyCaSsTI
: IIIIIIIIIII
: IIIIIIIII
: IIIIIII
: IIIIIII
: IIIIIII
: IIIIIII
: IIIIIII
: IIIIIII
: IIIIIIIIIII
:
I think that you may be under investigation, do you want to meet me
somewhere, flesh and blood? I can promise you no harm will come to you,
I'm a friend.
- LoveGnael
Kyran shut down her computer, fast. It was not a good thing to be "under
investigation" that was the type of tip you got when someone was warning
you that someone you pissed off was catching up with you. Meeting people
in the flesh is dangerous as hell, but Kyran had done it before. She'd
set up face to face meetings with a lot of the hacks she knew of in the
city, but this one felt a lot different. If it had been Blayde setting
this up, no problem, but this Bodycast nut seemed somewhat scarier. It
made complete sense that CM would be taken down if he was hacking the
legislature, but usually governmental disappearances weren't quite so
messy. She wanted to do some work on her own. Kyran got on the subway a
block from her home and headed out to one of the campus computer labs.
Sometimes the lab guys got pissy about a kid being there, but she could
just tell them she was a professor's kid, and it was sort of true. She
could usually bribe them by fixing something. College systems always
start out inefficient, the programmers just aren't young enough. She hit
a terminal in computer lab D and craced into the system the way she always
did. The school thought she was two students and an alumni so far. She
sent a message back to Loveganel
------- Forget it. For all I know you could be some kind of maniac. Only
an idiot gives out his numbers on the net, and only an idiot sets up flesh
meetings with nuts he just met. My name's not Kyran.
silverdragon
Kyran moved through the park, looking ofr a blue vest. She felt eyes on
her and turned to find herself face to face with a young boy, probably
between the ages of tne and thirteen. He was wearing a blue vest.
--------------------
then got back online and looked over her latest projects for holes that a
good hack might be able to get through. She found a couple in one of
them, but that one wasn't illegal at all, so she wasn't worried about it.
On a whim, she looked up the Captain Marvelous death story again. It was
completely wiped. The newspaper site was missing that page completely.
There was something very wrong here. Kyran tried again and the computer
screen went completely black. A pair of bright green eyes gif snapped
open in the dead center of the screen and the words "WE SEE YOU" flashed
at the top of the monitor. The computer was completely locked up. Kyran
snapped off the monitor and grabbed her bag. That was just too cut up.
She took off down the stairs trying not to look as freaked out as she was.
She left the building and headed down the block toward lab R. She had
to figure out what was going on, and she had two more identities to maim
before she would have to re-hack the college system. She had started to
calm down when she heard the sirens screaming toward the Richards Building
where Lab D was. She trotted the rest of the way over to lab R, cursing
herself for writing back to Lovegnael before hitting that cite. That sort
of thing could be followed if the hack she had pissed off was good enough,
and who knew what sort of bombs they had. She realized that she was
thinking like CM, but she couldn't help it. She was scared. She still
looked pretty calm on the outside. Nobody survives long in the City if
they don't know how not to look scared. She had a smile for the lab guy
on duty, and logged on as the alumni. She sat for a minute staring at the
screen, wondering just whatshe wanted to do. She chose E-mail again.
------Lovegnael, where?-------
there was an reply almost immediately.
----Change of heart, I see. Central Park west on the playground. I'll
wear a blue vest.-------
Kyran shut out of this name and opened up the other one. She wrote a few
warnings on hackerboards about not looking too hard aT certain news cites,
as they might be nastily bombed rhen logged off and headed for the park.
"Hey, name's Nale, said the kid, sticking out his hand. Kyran was a bit
surprised at his bluntness but found herself shaking the kids' hand.
"You're Kyran, right?"
Kyran nodded unconsciously. There was *something* unusual about the kid,
but she wasn't quite able to put her finger on it.
"Here's the deal," he said, his voice lowering a bit, "good ole CM was
into some heavy duty shit. I don't know anything because I've been locked
out too many times. That's why I need you."
"Look, I can't just" Kyran started.
"Kyran, I... I need your skills. Look, I have this..." The kid reached
into his pocket an pulled out a floppy disk. "This is a little something
I've created. It should help you out." He handed the disk to Kyran.
It had no company label and the entire case appeared to be made of some
sort of silver metal. She turned it over to look at the back and saw that
there was a beautiful dragon carved into it.
"Be careful with it. It's the only of its kind. I'd use it myself, but I
can't be seen in the places where you need to go. We have to know what CM
knew. Well, I have to know. But, you don't have to do this if you don't
want to..."
Kyran watched as his eyes curled up in the most pleading way. She could
feel that this kid was asking a big favor of her and she *really* wanted
to know what was on this mysterious disk.