Cut Yourself Free

Morpheus The Black

Marcus sighed deeply as he went through the "YOUR_COOPERATION" video for probably the 10th time. There was no sort of lead as to how to find Eida, at least, not one apparent to Marcus. All he could note in the video was the binary code in the background, which translated to "DANCER", an audio sample in reverse that said "Three lords of Cinder" and about 3 lines of code that he just didn't understand the meaning to. It was hurting his brain, and he needed a break.

With a defeated look, he got up and grabbed an soda for himself, and an energy drink for Josh, who was working just a diligently as him, even more probably. He sat the energy drink down on Josh's desk with a loud clunk, effectively startling the male.

"Sorry, man." said Marcus with a chuckle, rubbing the back of his neck. Josh's expression didn't change much. He simply opened his drink and went back to work, making Marcus grumble quietly. 

"Hey, I need your help with the last part of the video." said Marcus. "There's these three lines of code that appear at the end that I don't even recognize." 

Josh paused what he was doing and pulled up the video, skipping to the end and seeing the code. It took him a second to process what he saw before he opened a program and inserted the code into a program. Nothing happened, just an error message that said "YOU'VE BEEN EXILED". The two of them looked at each other confused.

"Exiled? Is she trying to taunt us or something?" said Marcus slightly annoyed.

"No, I don't think so. There's more to it."

"Well, you can solve this." Marcus grabbed his computer and showed him all he uncovered. Josh was silent for a moment, closely analyzing his notes before typing "DANCER OF THE BOREAL VALLEY" into the program. When he ran it, he got coordinates to an arcade downtown. 

"How the hell did you know that, Josh?" asked Marcus, genuinely surprised, yet not really at the same time. If anyone in the group could solve something very obscure, it would definitely be him.

"I've played Dark Souls." he said blatantly. Marcus gave him a pat on the back before taking his computer back and running out of the Hackerspace, dashing right past all the people discussing stats on characters and roleplaying in their DND games, and to the busy streets of San Francisco.

-----

"So Marcus, I did a little bit of digging, and I found out that there was a hacker in Chicago who went by Eida as well. I'm able to access some of their work, but most of it is encrypted."

"You think they're the same?"

"Definitely. Let's see... There are videos of them destroying various CTOS servers, articles about DedSec here in San Francisco, dirt on business leaders in Chicago... Hey, there's an audio file of Aiden Pearce."

"Play it."

There was a small bit of static as Josh played the audio. The two of them listened silently.

"I need to leave Chicago. Blume's offering a $100,000 bounty on my head, and I'm not sticking around to see who's going to take up their offer... Hey, don't look at me like that. It's too dangerous for me to stick around any of you... Why are you trying to tag along, kid? You're much safer without me..." There's a moment of silence before Aiden lets out a small oof, like something hit him in the chest. "If you really want to do this, we need to live separate lives. Only for a little bit... You got this, kid. I'm proud of you..."