Vendetta

MOTHERLOAD 1/2

DedSec have been piling up the follower count for about 3 months now—since I officially joined the team on-site, anyway. With the amount of missions completed overtime, we reach a point where we finally have enough processing power to take on the monster: Blume. And thankfully, I've actually been recovering from everything I've endured. And that's not just since I've been in San Francisco. Ever since my breakdown with Horatio's death, Wrench encouraged me to fill in Sitara on it once I was ready. And from there, Sitara has been my biggest support with the few therapy sessions I've had so far.

It wasn't long after the Tezcas incident, though, that we held a small funeral for Ratio at his desk. Marcus spoke on behalf of all of us. And although it wasn't planned to the tea nor was it some fancy thing: it was what was needed to move on, to get everyone focused back on our mission, with a new motive. To do it for him, and so that we don't lose anyone else.

Marcus wasn't as eager to involve me in more missions since then, but I've eased my way back into it, starting with helping to infiltrate Tidis after Marcus' last big mission of hacking into the Galilei building to gain access to Blume's main server. After comforting Wrench about the sacrifice of his HAUM 2.0 bot in order to destroy the Tidis generators, I knew I needed to get back out a little more. That's when a sudden mission came our way, beginning with a suspicious shipping container and ending with stealing a main server tower from a Chinese barge. Marcus successfully made it through, after all I could hear over the DEDS3C CH4NNEL was guns blazing. But I got to be a part of extracting Marcus from the ship quite a fair way out from the mainland. Josh actually let me control his ultra giant quadcopter for the first time.

From that mission, though, Marcus was to be off his feet for a couple of days after an injury from a bullet grazing his right leg. And because of that, I was the main field dog (as I liked to jokingly call it) once we knew we had to sneak into !Nvite after some more information we received about them. Sitara even accompanied me in our next mission when it was time to pay a visit to congressman Mark Thruss' penthouse to hack into his computer. Marcus was back in the game when it came to the heavy lifting part of it—destroying the voting machines on the other side of the city after our hack.

It wasn't even the thrill of the missions or rush over the last few months that was hard to overcome, though. It was the night I decided to forfeit the face mask, in the Hacker-space at least. I didn't want it to be too formal, so over pizza on a night in working late, I left my mask out of the equation and tried to settle in. Josh commented first, saying that my scar was cool. Wrench made a sexual innuendo about my lips to which I lightly smacked him for. I felt Marcus and Sitara's eyes on me after they witnessed us properly flirting for the first time.

And Ray? With Wrench (my apparent bodyguard now) hanging close by, I allowed a quick 2-years-too-late conversation with him. I bluntly told him how I felt and he understood. But, I also didn't want to let my stubbornness get in the way anymore, so I made amends with him as much as I could so that we were at least on we-only-talk-if-it's-related-to-a-mission terms.

What really changed my mindset and attitude towards the others was how Wrench had actually let his guard down around me. I hadn't seen him with his mask off since that night in my apartment, but I could tell by his protective nature—something was different. He was different.

But not to an extreme extent. I mean, it's Wrench I'm talking about.

Marcus and I are on our way through Gary's Games & Glory after a mission brief over breakfast when I can feel the thick tension emanating from the Hacker-space. I pull my face mask off once we're through the door and let it rest on my chin as we start down the stairs. And when we reach the bottom, I know something's not good when we find everyone congregated at the main desk around Sitara's laptop.