Chapter One - Section 1

First draft of the first section of chapter one

“Katasaki! Get me a node-link!” I shouted up the back steps of the old-world device repair shop that had become our hideaway. We recently finished setting up a series of cables to the closest personal dwellings that would allow us to hack into MART's network without broadcasting our location. “Sure! Just make sure you keep your personal node identifier disabled when you connect to the inter-node system,” he called back as I walked up the stairs towards him.

 It was only coincidence that led us to this abandoned shop during our desperate flight from MART's cronies. Rallaa remarked that his node may have detected a MART network dead-zone as we fled, so we investigated, thinking it might serve as a safe haven, and found a small building not quite in the center of the dead-zone. We'd already traveled halfway across the continent over the course of a week and a half, so we figured as long as MART couldn't see us, we could stay at whatever this building was. As we walked closer we could make out the words 'Jimmy's Repair and Hobby Shop' on a sign bolted to the front, above the door. Perhaps it had once been part of a small town, but now, however, it was the only building standing amongst the piles of debris that marked the edge of a large city.

Katasaki had been attempting to clear us a living space on the second floor of the abandoned shop that was now our home. Old-world junk cluttered every inch of the floor and he was not making much headway with it. “Good god Kata, you've been up here how long, again?” I said as I reached the top and gazed into the room. “Give me a break... you know I love this sort of stuff, it's hard to get rid of any of it,” he retorted. “They had some games and software even I would have trouble getting my hands on, just lyin' around up here.” He handed me what I was asking for, a small electronic device attached to a wire that had the sole purpose of helping an individual's node synchronize with with the global network via electric pulse tuning. Ours of course, was modified illegally so that even when our node is synched, it does not register as being connected.The purpose of modifying this piece of a equipment was that we were now on every one of MART network's watch lists. The fact that MART used their own broadcasting system to proclaim our 'misdeeds' so that they didn't have to state the truth of why we were on those lists, because they were 'private' watch lists actually worked somewhat in our favor. This is because, even though the government's employees may be influenced by MART, the company itself has no control over local or state police forces. Meaning the only people looking for us were those employed directly by MART, or their private security force. Don't misunderstand me though, MART has the largest private security force in the world, so taking them on is still a daunting prospect.

I hooked the node-link device onto the collar of my shirt and sat down in the nearest chair. “Node, link-up,” I said as I closed my eyes and prepared for the jolting sensation of my brain being kicked into overdrive as it was forced to process all the information I needed, far faster than a node-less human would be able to handle. This was just a daily check of MART's security distribution and movements, but it was always done with an innate sense of dread. A fear that our feeling of safety would be shattered instantaneously.

“All-clear, it seems,” I said as I opened my eyes. “It never ceases to amaze me how fast you're able to hack into MART's security database, and find out all of their security force's movements,” Katasaki said, somewhat in awe. “I don't know why I'm able to do it either, to be honest,” I replied. “Hopefully they haven't caught on and started to feed us false information.”